Palestinians Say 'Ready for 24-Hour Truce', Israel Asks for U.S. Mediation as Gaza Toll Hits 1,210
Hamas' armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, said Tuesday that any truce with Israel must include a stop to Israeli "aggression" and lifting of its Gaza blockade, as the death toll from 22 days of Israeli bombardment rose to 1,210.
"We don't accept any condition of ceasefire," Mohammed Deif said in an audio address carried by Hamas radio and television.
"There is no ceasefire without the stop of the aggression and the end of the siege."
Earlier on Tuesday, a senior PLO official said the Palestinian leadership, along with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, are willing to observe a 24-hour ceasefire in Gaza, as the assault on the enclave left dozens more Palestinians dead.
Yasser Abed Rabbo, secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization, said after consultations with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the two main militant groups in Gaza, that there was "willingness for a ceasefire and humanitarian truce for 24 hours."
A joint delegation headed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would travel to Cairo to take the next step, he added.
But Hamas swiftly said it had not agreed to any new truce and was waiting for Israel to show its hand first.
"When we have an Israeli commitment... on a humanitarian truce, we will look into it but we will never declare a truce from our side while the occupation keeps killing our children," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zukhri said on his Facebook page.
A series of ceasefires in recent days have failed to take hold, as both sides appeared more determined than ever to keep up the fighting.
More than 100 corpses were brought to Gaza morgues on Tuesday after intense Israeli fire, bringing the number of Palestinians killed in the 22-day assault to at least 1,210.
Israel stepped up its artillery fire overnight, especially in central Gaza's Bureij refugee camp, spreading in the afternoon to Jabaliya in the north and Rafah in the south.
Since the Israeli offensive began on July 8, 7,000 Palestinians have been injured in Gaza, emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said.
Most of the 1,210 Palestinian deaths were civilian, according to the United Nations.
Fifty-six lives have been lost on the Israeli side, including 53 soldiers, two Israeli civilians and a Thai agricultural worker killed in southern Israel.
Or Monday night, a deluge of bombs rained down on Gaza, after an uneasy truce to mark the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and the Eid al-Fitr holiday.
Shells fired from tanks struck Gaza's biggest power plant, causing damage and a fire, bringing it grinding to a halt, a senior official with the electricity authority said.
And an air strike targeted the home of top Hamas leader Ismail Haniya in Gaza City's Shati refugee camp, officials said.
By the time dawn broke on the second day of Eid, at least 24 people had been killed, among them nine women and four children, medics said.
"Suddenly, missiles were falling like rain," said Gaza resident Mohamed al-Dalo.
"We all left our homes, some running in one direction, some in another, nobody knew which way to go."
In the afternoon, a new round of Israeli tank shelling on houses at Jabaliya, in northern Gaza, killed at least 13 people, medics said.
And later Israeli troops killed five Palestinian militants in a Gaza gun battle, the army said. It said the clash broke out as militants emerged from a tunnel and opened fire at soldiers.
Israel announced another five soldiers were killed in a militant ambush late Monday after they sneaked into southern Israel by a tunnel.
Also on Monday, mortar killed four soldiers near a southern kibbutz, the army said, while another soldier had been killed in action in southern Gaza.
The World Health Organization now estimates that more than 215,000 people, or one Gazan in every eight, have fled their homes in the overcrowded territory.
Many have headed for already-cramped U.N. schools in the north, where children ran barefoot around a dirty school yard alongside stinking piles of rubbish.
The surge in violence drew increasingly urgent international demands for an end to hostilities.
"In the name of humanity, the violence must stop," U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon on Monday.
But the calls went unheeded, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warning it would be "a lengthy campaign" that would go on until troops destroyed cross-border tunnels used for staging attacks on Israel.
"Israeli citizens cannot live with the threat from rockets and from death tunnels -- death from above and from below," he said.
However, later on Tuesday U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Netanyahu has asked for fresh U.S. help in trying to broker a ceasefire in Gaza.
"Last night we talked, and the prime minister talked to me about an idea and a possibility of a ceasefire. He raised it with me, as he has consistently," Kerry said.
Netanyahu had said he "would embrace a ceasefire that permits Israel to protect itself against the tunnels and obviously not be disadvantaged for the great sacrifice they have made thus far."
The top U.S. diplomat dismissed a torrent of attacks in the Israeli press since his failed mediation attempt during a week-long Middle East trip last week.
"I've taken hits before in politics, I'm not worried about that. It's not about me -- this is about Israel and Israel's right to defend itself," Kerry insisted after meeting with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin.
"I'm not going to worry about personal attacks."
Kerry stressed: "We are working very carefully with our Israeli friends in order to be able to find a way to reduce the civilian loss of life, to prevent this from spiraling downwards into a place from which ... both sides have difficulty finding a way forward."
Kerry said if there was an agreement on serious negotiations about the wider issues both Israel and Hamas want to address, it would happen in Cairo, "it would be entirely without pre-conditions and it would not prejudice Israel's ability to defend itself."
"It is more appropriate to try to resolve the underlying issues at a negotiating table, than to continue a tit-for-tat of violence ... which will be much more difficult to recover from," Kerry said.
Tensions had risen sharply after a shell on Monday landed inside the Shifa hospital compound in Gaza City, followed by a blast at a children's playground in the city's Shati refugee camp, that killed 10, eight of them children.
"We have not fired on the hospital or on Shati refugee camp," Major Arye Shalicar told Agence France-Presse, saying the army had footage showing militants firing at Israel but the missiles falling short inside Gaza.
With the Palestinian death toll soaring, Iran's supreme leader accused Israel of committing "genocide" in Gaza and called for the Muslim to arm Palestinian militants.
Source: Agence France Presse
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