San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
ISRAEL-PALESTINIAN FIGHT ESCALATES
U.S. looks to help mediate cease-fire as deaths mount
Fighting between Israelis and Palestinians spiraled across several fronts Saturday as Israel destroyed a high-rise building in Gaza City housing the offices of two major international media outlets, thousands of Palestinians fled their homes, Hamas militants fired more rocket barrages toward the Tel Aviv area and protests broke out again in the occupied West Bank.
The violence continued amid increased U.S. efforts to help mediate a cease-fire, as President Joe Biden spoke with Israeli and Palestinian leaders and an American envoy, Hady Amr, landed in Israel for two days of talks with Israeli and Arab counterparts. They joined efforts led by Egyptian, Qatari and U.N. officials to secure a break in the fighting.
But those efforts showed no sign of success: The fighting is the most intense since 2014 and has taken on a rare complexity because of its spread across the entirety of Israel and the occupied territories.
Early today, Israeli warplanes struck several buildings and roads in Gaza City. Photos circulated by residents and journalists showed the airstrikes created a crater that blocked one of the main roads leading to Shifa, the largest hospital in the strip.
The Health Ministry said those airstrikes left at least two dead and 25 wounded, including children and women. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
The death toll is overwhelmingly higher in Gaza, where at least 145 people have been killed since Monday, according to Palestinian officials. But Israeli cities have been wracked by civil unrest for days, amid mob attacks by both Jews and Arabs. And they have been targeted by more than 2,800 missiles from Gaza, 90 percent of which have been intercepted by the Iron Dome, an anti-missile detection system partly financed by the United States. Ten Israeli residents have been killed, along with two Israeli soldiers, according to the Israeli government.
The Israeli army said it had made more than 670 of its own strikes in Gaza by Saturday night. One of the most recent was in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza, which early Saturday killed at least 10 members of the same extended family, eight of them children, according to Palestinian officials and local news reports.
Hundreds of thousands of Gaza residents are descended from Palestinians who f led their homes in what is now Israel during the 1948 Arab-israeli war, and their towns are still known as refugee camps, though they resemble small suburbs.
Mohammed al-hadidi, father of four of the slain children, said his family had gone to the camp to celebrate Eid al-fitr, an Islamic festival. His wife, her brother’s four children and her sister-in-law were among those killed, and only a 5-monthold boy, Omar, was pulled from the rubble alive.
“They were sleeping in their homes,” al-hadidi said, speaking to Shehab, a news agency linked to Hamas. “They weren’t holding weapons, they weren’t firing rockets and they weren’t harming anyone.”
The Israeli army said it had “attacked a number of Hamas terror organization senior officials in an apartment used as terror infrastructure in the area of the al-shati refugee camp” but did not release more information. The Palestinian militant group Hamas controls the Gaza Strip.
Hours after speaking with Biden, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed in a speech to continue attacks until Israel’s security from Hamas rocket fire is guaranteed. “You know and I know: No country would tolerate this,” Netanyahu said. “Israel has responded forcefully to these attacks and we will continue to respond forcefully until the security of our people is reinstated and restored.”
In his call with Netanyahu, Biden expressed his “strong support” for Israel’s campaign but raised concern about civilian casualties and protection of journalists, the White House said.
A spokesperson for the Israeli foreign ministry, Lior Haiat, said that Israel did everything possible to minimize civilian casualties and that it was Hamas that fired indiscriminately at Israeli civilians.
Hamas and its allies in Gaza returned fire with a barrage of rockets across central Israel in the early afternoon, sending sunbathers sprinting from the beaches of Tel Aviv toward bomb shelters.
Most of the rockets were intercepted by the Iron Dome. But at least one landed in Ramat Gan, a Tel Aviv suburb, killing one person, Israeli media reported. Another rocket fell near an Ikea store south of Tel Aviv but left no injuries.
On Saturday, the United Nations said more than 17,000 residents of Gaza had evacuated their homes and were sheltering in 41 U.n.run schools across Gaza, only some of which were equipped with supplies, such as blankets, to house displaced people.
Across the coastal strip, the power supply had fallen to six to eight hours per day on average, and less than four in some areas, affecting medical centers, water supply and Gaza’s sewage treatment plants, the U.N. said.
On Saturday afternoon, the Israeli air force also destroyed two towers in Gaza City, one of which housed the local offices of The Associated Press and Al-jazeera, a Qatar-based television network. Netanyahu said the target housed militant infrastructure.
The Israeli army first called the building’s owner, Jawad Mahdi, giving him an hour to evacuate his tenants. AP staffers and other occupants evacuated safely.