GAZA/JERUSALEM, (Reuters) – Gaza fighting raged yesterday, displacing thousands more Palestinians in the battered territory as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said efforts to secure a truce between Israel and Hamas had made some progress.
In a blow to Israel’s economy and image, American aviation authorities extended a ban on U.S. flights to Tel Aviv for a second day, spooked by rocket salvoes out of the Gaza Strip, with many other global airlines also avoiding the Jewish state.
Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, speaking in Qatar, praised the group’s fighters, whom he said had made gains against Israel and said he supported a humanitarian truce but a ceasefire would only be acceptable in exchange for easing Gazans’ plight.
“Let’s agree first on the demands and on implementing them and then we can agree on the zero hour for a ceasefire… We will not accept any proposal that does not lift the blockade… We do not desire war and we do not want it to continue but we will not be broken by it,” he said.
Adding to the pressure on Israel, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said there was “a strong possibility” that it was committing war crimes in Gaza, where 692 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have died in the fighting.
She also condemned indiscriminate Islamist rocket fire out of Gaza and the United Nations Human Rights Council said it would launch an international inquiry into alleged violations.
Israel denied any wrongdoing. “Get lost,” Justice Minister Tzipi Livni said on her Facebook page in response to the investigation.
Kerry met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and a grim-faced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday. He later returned to Egypt, which shares a border with Gaza and has mediated with Islamist Hamas.
“We have certainly made some steps forward. There is still work to be done,” said Kerry, on one of his most intensive regional visits since the peace negotiations he had brokered between Netanyahu and Abbas broke down in April.
An Egyptian official said he expected a humanitarian truce to go into effect by the weekend, in time for the Eid al-Fitr festival, Islam’s biggest annual celebration that follows the fasting month of Ramadan.
However, a senior U.S. official played down the Egyptian official’s confidence that there would be a truce during Eid, saying this was a U.S. hope but it was by no means locked in.
“It would not be accurate to say that we expect a ceasefire by the weekend,” said the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “We are continuing to work on it, but it is not set at this point.”
Kerry, who plans to stay in Cairo until Friday, has been working through Abbas, Egypt and other regional proxies because the United States, like Israel, shuns Hamas as a terrorist group. Hamas brushed off the U.S. diplomat’s appeal, saying it would not hold fire without making gains.
“Our interest and that of our people is that no agreement should be made before the conditions of factions of resistance are met,” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said.
Israel launched its offensive on July 8 to halt rocket salvoes by Hamas and its allies, which have struggled under an Israeli-Egyptian economic blockade on Gaza and been angered by a crackdown on their supporters in the nearby occupied West Bank.
After an aerial and naval bombardment failed to quell the outgunned guerrillas, Israel poured ground forces into the Gaza Strip last Thursday, looking to knock out Hamas’s rocket stores and destroy a vast, underground network of tunnels.
“We are meeting resistance around the tunnels … they are constantly trying to attack us around and in the tunnels. That is the trend,” Israeli military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Lerner said on Wednesday.
MILITARY LOSSES RISE
Israel announced that three of its soldiers were killed by explosive devices yesterday, lifting the army death toll to 32. Three civilians have also been killed in rocket attacks out of Gaza, including a Thai labourer hit yesterday.
The military says one of its soldiers is also missing and believes he might be dead. Hamas says it has captured him, but has not released a picture of him in their hands.
