Efforts to agree on a cease-fire between
Israel and Hamas intensified Tuesday, but the struggle to achieve even a brief
pause in the fighting emphasized the obstacles to finding any lasting solution.
On the deadliest day of fighting in the
week-old conflict, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived hurriedly
in Jerusalem and met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to push
for a truce. She was due in Cairo on Wednesday to consult with Egyptian
officials in contact with Hamas, placing her and the Obama administration at
the center of a fraught process with multiple parties, interests, and demands.
Officials on all sides had raised
expectations that a cease-fire would begin around midnight, followed by
negotiations for a longer-term agreement. But by the end of Tuesday, officials
with Hamas, the militant Islamist group that governs Gaza, said any
announcement would not come at least until Wednesday.
The Israelis, who have massed tens of
thousands of troops on the Gaza border and have threatened to invade for a
second time in four years to end the rocket fire from Gaza, never publicly
backed the idea of a short break in fighting. They said they were open to a
diplomatic accord but were looking for something more enduring.
‘‘If there is a possibility of achieving a long-term solution to this
problem through diplomatic means, we prefer that,’’ Netanyahu said before
meeting with Clinton at his office. ‘‘But if not, I’m sure you understand that
Israel will have to take whatever actions necessary to defend its people.’’
Clinton spoke of the need for ‘‘a durable
outcome that promotes regional stability and advances the security and
legitimate aspirations of Israelis and Palestinians alike.’’ It was unclear
whether she was starting a complex task of shuttle diplomacy or whether she
expected to achieve a pause in the hostilities and then head home.
The diplomatic moves came as the
antagonists on both sides stepped up their attacks. Israeli aerial and naval
forces assaulted several Gaza targets in multiple strikes, including a
suspected rocket-launching site near Al Shifa Hospital. That attack killed more
than a dozen people, bringing the total fatalities in Gaza to more than 130 — roughly
half of them civilians, the Gaza Health Ministry said.
A delegation visiting from the Arab League
canceled a news conference at the hospital because of the Israeli aerial
assaults as wailing ambulances brought victims in, some of them decapitated.
The Israeli assaults carried into early
Wednesday, with multiple blasts punctuating the otherwise darkened Gaza skies.
Militants in Gaza fired a barrage of at
least 200 rockets into Israel, killing an Israeli soldier — the first military
casualty on the Israeli side since the hostilities broke out. The Israeli
military said the soldier, identified as Yosef Fartuk, 18, had died from a
rocket strike that hit an area near Gaza. Israeli officials said a civilian
military contractor working near the Gaza border was also killed, bringing the
number of fatalities in Israel from the week of rocket mayhem to five.
Other Palestinian rockets hit the southern
Israeli cities of Beersheba and Ashdod, and longer-range rockets were fired at
Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Neither main city was struck. One Gaza rocket hit a
building in Rishon LeZion, just south of Tel Aviv, injuring one person and
wrecking the top three floors.
Senior Egyptian officials in Cairo said
Israel and Hamas were ‘‘very close’’ to a cease-fire agreement. ‘‘We have not
received final approval, but I hope to receive it any moment,’’ said Essam
el-Haddad, President Mohammed Morsi’s top foreign affairs adviser.
Foreign diplomats who were briefed on the
outlines of a tentative agreement said it had been structured in stages —
first, an announcement of a cease-fire, followed by its implementation for 48
hours. That would allow time for Clinton to involve herself in the process on
the ground here and create a window for negotiators to agree on conditions for
a longer-term cessation of hostilities.
US officials said Washington was betting on
the pragmatism of Egypt’s new president, a former leader of the Muslim
Brotherhood, the movement with which Hamas is affiliated.
While President Obama publicly stressed
Israel’s right to self-defense because of domestic political concerns,
officials said the administration also had decided to take an understanding
approach to Morsi’s need to denounce Israel in order to appeal to his domestic
audience.
‘‘We know that the Egyptians have their domestic politics as well,’’
one US official said, and each president understood the other’s political
context. ‘‘But they both agree that this nonsense can’t go on.’’
Officials of Morsi’s government
acknowledged that the Gaza battle had put them in a bind. As Egypt’s first
democratically elected president, Morsi must respond to a public deeply angry
at Israel and eager to rally behind the Palestinians. ‘‘But if he responds
fully to public opinion, he risks what we have been trying to do for peace and
stability in the region,’’ a senior official said, speaking on the condition of
anonymity.
Indeed, despite the Egyptian government’s
caustic statements about Israel and noisy solidarity with Hamas, several US
officials said Morsi and the new Islamist government needed no encouragement in
its efforts to push for an end to not only the Israeli bombing but also Hamas’s
missile fire.
But Israel wants guarantees that Egypt will
stop the flow of arms into Gaza from Sinai, and that seems a tall order. Egypt
has been unable to control Sinai and would not want to be seen in the role of
Israeli enforcer. Egypt is hoping Hamas will restrain itself on missile
imports, but it is far from clear that Hamas wants to or can, given the range
of forces in Gaza vying for power, including the Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad.
Within Hamas itself, there are divisions
and fractured views on the truce negotiations. In Gaza on Tuesday, Fawzi
Barhoum, the Hamas spokesman, said that ‘‘we hold absolutely no hope of Hillary
Clinton’’ helping to resolve the conflict.
Obama, who was in Asia, had found himself
repeatedly on the phone with Middle Eastern leaders in recent days and decided
that Clinton, who also spoke to a dozen of her counterparts here, could make
the difference in setting a cease-fire.
Netanyahu’s calculations are numerous. He
has an election looming in January, and agreeing to stop his operation in Gaza
could be risky if rocket fire resumed. But sending troops into Gaza poses
perhaps even more risks.
‘‘The Israeli government will face its voters without any tangible
achievement in hand to show,’’ Nahum Barnea, a columnist for the Yediot
Aharonot newspaper, wrote Tuesday. He said that he did not believe Netanyahu
had begun this operation with electoral considerations in mind, but that ‘‘the
deliberations about ending it are deeply affected by political calculations.’’
Netanyahu is also contending with a
radically altered Middle East, and while he says that protecting his people is
not dependent on who is in power in Egypt or Turkey, a reduced military
operation and fewer civilian casualties in Gaza would make relations with both
countries less difficult.
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