Gaza war
Gaza/Jerusalem: Two Palestinians were killed in an Israeli air strike in Gaza on Sunday, a day after Egypt called for an open-ended ceasefire to enable fresh truce negotiations to end the 48-day war which has left over 2,100 people dead in the coastal strip.
The pace of Israeli raids was slower than yesterday when at least 60 strikes pounded Gaza, killing 10 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and bringing down a 12-storey apartment block.
But there was no immediate sign of either side adopting the ceasefire Egypt appealed for to allow negotiators from the two sides to return to Cairo to thrash out the details of a durable truce. Israeli aircraft hit 20 “terror targets” in Gaza during the morning, while militants fired at least 20 rockets or mortar rounds at Israel, the army said. An Israeli strike on the western side of Gaza City killed two Palestinians and wounded five, emergency services said. Since a previous round of frantic Egyptian diplomacy collapsed last Tuesday, shattering 10 days of calm, 88 Palestinians and a four-year-old Israeli boy have been killed in the violence.
The Egyptian foreign ministry yesterday called on “concerned parties to accept a ceasefire of unlimited duration and to resume indirect negotiations in Cairo”. Previous ceasefires with fixed timeframes have failed to give Egyptian mediators shuttling between Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams enough time to broker a deal acceptable to both sides. Israel insists on full safety for millions of citizens who live in daily fear of rocket fire. Gaza’s Islamist de facto ruler, Hamas, says any truce must provide for a lifting of Israel’s crippling eight-year blockade of the strip and opening of a seaport and airport.
Saturday’s pounding by the Israeli air force came after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised harsh retribution for the death of the Israeli child in a rocket strike on a kibbutz near the Gaza border.
But Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon told community leaders in the south that Israel now needed to look for a diplomatic solution to the rocket fire, adding that it would be doing so from a position of strength.
“I am convinced the other side in its condition needs a ceasefire more than we do,” Yaalon said. “We need to see that we direct things diplomatically… to a place in which we’ll achieve quiet and security for a longer period,” he said.
At least 2,105 Palestinians and 68 people on the Israeli side, all but four of them soldiers, have been killed since the conflict erupted on July 8. (PTI)