Fighting in Gaza Resumes as Hamas Rocket Fire Defies Truce Plan

Shortly after the campaign resumed, Hamas offered to go back to the United Nations-sponsored truce that took effect on July 25. As rockets continued to fly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Hamas of violating its own cease-fire and gave no indication his country would suspend military operations.

“Hamas doesn’t even accept its own cease-fire,” Netanyahu said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program. “It’s continuing to fire at us as we speak.”

The conflict, nearing the end of its third week, is the third major military showdown between the sides in less than six years. It has already claimed the lives of more than 1,050 Palestinians, 45 Israelis and a Thai worker in Israel.

Previous truce deals have failed to resolve underlying issues including the proliferation of arms in Gaza and Hamas’s demand to end Israel’s economic blockade of the Palestinian territory, initiated in 2006 and joined by Egypt.

Both sides rejected a U.S. truce proposal put forth last week by Secretary of State John Kerry, who sought a week-long break in hostilities to give time to reach a sustainable deal. In the absence of a political agreement, the UN won a halt in fighting over the weekend to give Palestinians an opportunity to stock up on supplies, bury their dead, and repair water and energy infrastructure.

Troubled Truce

The truce has been an on-again, off-again affair since late yesterday, when Israel agreed to extend it and Hamas didn’t. It broke down after Hamas fired about two dozen rockets and mortars, and the military announced that aerial, naval and ground operations would resume. Targets Israeli aircraft struck shortly after included a building housing Hamas’s Al-Aqsa television station, witnesses said.

‘We aren’t in a game where they fire on us and we don’t fire back,’’ Justice Minister Tzipi Livni said in an interview to Channel 2 television. “All options” are on the table “to pummel Hamas and attain long-term quiet,” added Livni, who was Israel’s chief negotiator in nine months of unsuccessful peace talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, based in the West Bank.

Hamas Reversal

Shortly after Israel restarted its battlefield campaign, Hamas dropped earlier conditions for extending the cease-fire, including an Israeli troop pullout. It wasn’t clear why Hamas changed its mind.

“Responding to the UN intervention and considering our people’s situation, it was agreed with the Palestinian factions to go for a 24-hour cease-fire that starts 2 p.m. on Sunday,” Sami Abu Zuhri , a spokesman for the group, said in a text message.

Some in Gaza urged Hamas to keep fighting to end the blockade, which sharply restricts the movement of people and goods in and out of the impoverished territory of 1.8 million. “In the Gaza Strip, 2 million people have been slowly dying every day for eight years,” said 26-year-old Khaled Sallah from Gaza City. “Either our lives change and we live in dignity or the fighting continues.”

Others, such as Hind Sha’aban, a 28-year-old mother of three, want to let politicians and diplomats “change our reality in Gaza.”

Save the Poor

“The fighting must stop to save the lives of the poor,” Sha’aban said. “Every minute I feel like my children and I are going to get killed. I don’t know what will happen, are they expecting to stop fighting after 5,000 people or more are killed?”

Israel says its campaign is intended to quell the rocket fire and destroy a network of tunnels militants dug into Israeli territory to carry out attacks. Israel, the U.S. and European Union label Hamas a terrorist group.

Netanyahu said Israel must disarm Gaza to bring about a sustainable peace.

“We have to demilitarize it from the weapons that Hamas has put in there -- missiles, rockets, terror tunnels,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program. “We can’t allow them to restock this arsenal or we’ll be stuck in another five, six months with the same problem.”

The military operation has barely affected Israel’s financial markets. The benchmark government bond rose for a fifth consecutive day, increasing the record high. The yield on the note due March 2024 declined 4 basis points to close at 2.72 percent. The TA-25 shares index declined 0.2 percent at the Tel Aviv close after Gazit Globe fell 2.2 percent on losses from U.S.-traded shares.

West Bank Spillover

Some in the Israeli cabinet, including Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, have spoken about reoccupying Gaza, nine years after Israel pulled out thousands of soldiers and settlers. Others, including Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, say Israel should continue its military campaign until the territory is demilitarized.

The violence flared after peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority collapsed in April and three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and killed in the West Bank last month, triggering an Israeli roundup of hundreds of militants from Hamas and other Palestinian groups.

The murder of a Palestinian teenager in east Jerusalem earlier this month in suspected retribution set off a wave of clashes between Palestinians and Israeli Arabs and Israeli police that has led to the arrest of about 1,000 rioters. In what appears to be the most serious spillover yet, a West Bank Palestinian driver wearing a wig was stopped at an Israeli military checkpoint today before he could drive his vehicle into Israel with a “powerful” explosive device and gas canisters, police said in a text message.