Hamas Defiant as Israeli Forces Push Into Gaza City

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/world/middleeast/13mideast.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&src=ig
January 13, 2009
By STEVEN ERLANGER and ETHAN BRONNER
JERUSALEM — Israeli ground forces called in a series of air strikes as fierce fighting continued in Gaza on Monday, the 17th day of Israel’s war against Hamas.

On Sunday, Israeli troops pushed into a heavily populated area of Gaza City from the south, and senior Israeli officials said for the first time in the war that they believed that the Hamas military wing was beginning to crack and that Hamas leaders inside Gaza were “eager” for a cease-fire.

Hamas leaders in Gaza, however, said Monday that the organization would continue to fight until the siege was ended and the crossings to Israel and Egypt were reopened. News agencies reported Monday that militants fired as many as 10 missiles out of Gaza into southern Israel, causing no casualties.

"We confirm to our people that victory is closer than ever," the Hamas cabinet in Gaza said in a statement distributed to journalists, according to a Reuters translation.

The Israeli military said that warplanes attacked five Hamas operatives along with weapons caches, tunnels and other targets, while Israeli gunboats fired from the sea. By midday, the Israeli military said its warplanes had struck 25 targets, including, it said, a mosque where Hamas stored rockets and mortars.

During a three-hour lull in fighting on Monday, the military said 165 truckloads of aid had been allowed into Gaza.

Egypt allowed at least two delegations into Gaza from its Rafah border crossing on Monday, relenting on a policy of blocking aid to the area, because of its relationship with Israel. A group of 38 Arab doctors passed through, after being held at the border for four days, and made their way to hospitals to help treat the thousands of wounded. Also, a group of European diplomats entered, returning later in the day.

Overnight, the Israeli military said, its warplanes carried out fewer strikes than on some previous nights.

Israel is facing intensifying accusations from around the world that its offensive is disproportionate to the damage caused by Hamas rocket fire into Israel, and that it has created a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The Gaza medical authorities are reporting 908 deaths, including at least 380 civilians. The Israeli military says it has killed at least several hundred Hamas fighters. Hamas has said it is not taking its wounded to public hospitals.

Thirteen Israelis have been killed, Israel has said.

Growing numbers of Palestinians are reporting being injured from burns by a phosphorous-type gas used by Israel to obscure its moves from Hamas fighters and render their infrared detectors useless. The substance is legal under international law, but its use is discouraged by Human Rights Watch, whose ballistics expert Mark Garlasco, said causes fires and serious burns in crowded civilian areas.

In Geneva, the United Nations Human Rights Council broadly condemned Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, saying it “resulted in massive violations of human rights of the Palestinian people.” The council voted 33 to 1 for the resolution, with Canada the only opposing vote. The United States is not a member.

President Bush, a strong supporter of Israel, said Monday at his final White House news conference that the solution to ending the war in Gaza was for Hamas to “stop firing rockets into Israel.”

“There will not be a sustainable cease-fire if they continue firing rockets,” he said in response to a question. “Israel has a right to defend herself.”

Israel has remained unwavering in pressing its campaign. On Sunday, Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert, told the nation that Israel was “getting close to achieving the goals it set for itself,” but that “more patience, determination and effort are still demanded.”

Mr. Olmert was speaking in the public part of the regular weekly cabinet meeting, and his words were broadcast to an Israeli populace that supports the war against Hamas in Gaza but is nervous about how and when it will end.

Mr. Olmert gave no time frame, but said Israel “must not miss out, at the last moment, on what has been achieved through an unprecedented national effort.”

Israeli officials also said Sunday that the military had been sending reserve units into Gaza since Thursday. They did not specify the number of reservists.

The announcement that additional forces had joined the fight in Gaza appeared aimed at adding pressure on Hamas, and raised the possibility of an expansion in the conflict, which began Dec. 27.

Cease-fire discussions were held on Monday in Cairo, where Hamas leaders met over the weekend with Egypt’s intelligence service chief, Omar Suleiman. Tony Blair, the former British prime minister and now an international envoy to the Palestinians, met with the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, following talks with Israeli leaders on Sunday.

But a senior Israeli Defense Ministry official who was to arrive in Cairo on Monday, Amos Gilad, postponed his trip, in a sign a truce was not on the immediate horizon.

Hamas officials who were in Cairo traveled to Damascus, where the group’s political director, Khaled Meshal, lives in exile. They were due to return Monday evening to continue talks, a Mubarak spokesman for told Bloomberg.

The Israeli cabinet secretary, Oved Yehezkel, told reporters that in the Sunday cabinet meeting the heads of army intelligence, Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, and of the Shin Bet security service, Yuval Diskin, said, “It is the inclination within Hamas to agree to a cease-fire, given the harsh blow it received and given the absence of accomplishment on the ground.”

The Israelis said this view inside Gaza was a contrast to the “unyielding stands” of Mr. Meshal. But Hamas “is not expected to wave a white flag” and is reserving rockets and weaponry to fire at the end of the conflict, the intelligence chiefs said.

Another senior Israeli security official said that Israeli soldiers had “confirmed through their sights” the killing of 300 Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters on the ground in Gaza, and that Hamas units were making mistakes and fighting without clear direction.

“I can say with a high level of confidence that for two days, what we have been hearing repeatedly is that Hamas inside Gaza is eager — eager — to achieve a cease-fire,” said the senior official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the issue’s delicate nature. “This is as opposed to the leadership in Damascus that is willing to fight to the last Palestinian.”

The Israelis were clearly all pushing a concerted message, but no official provided details on how Israel supported its assertion. It was impossible to get a response from Hamas leaders in Gaza, because they were in hiding from Israeli military strikes.

On Saturday, Mr. Meshal said in Damascus that Hamas would not consider a cease-fire until Israel ended the assault and opened all crossings into Gaza. He said that the ferocity of the Israeli campaign had crossed the line and called it a “holocaust,” adding, “You have destroyed the last chance for negotiations.”

Israel and the United States are trying to secure agreement on a deal brokered by Egypt that would mean a Hamas commitment to stop all rocket firing into Israel and an Egyptian commitment to block smuggling tunnels into Gaza, to stop the resupplying of Hamas with weaponry and cash. In return, Israel would agree to a cease-fire and the opening of its crossings into Gaza for goods and fuel and the opening of the Rafah crossing into Egypt, with European Union supervision.

If the Egyptian effort fails, Israeli officials said, the military is likely to go to a “third stage” of the war against Hamas in Gaza, with the reserve troops thrown into the battle.

An expansion of the war would most likely mean Israeli troops moving into southern Gaza, to take a strip of land at least 500 yards wide inside Gaza at the Egyptian border. Israel has been bombing the area to try to destroy smuggling tunnels between Gaza and Egypt.

Mr. Olmert and his two top cabinet ministers, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, were reported to disagree about the best way to win the war and consolidate Israeli gains. But they are under pressure from the army to decide on whether to expand the war or end it, in part because the soldiers become easier targets unless they are constantly moving.

There was a new development on Sunday in the investigation into one of the deadliest attacks so far — an Israeli mortar strike near a United Nations school on Tuesday that killed up to 43 Palestinians. The newspaper Haaretz reported that a military investigation had concluded that two Israeli shells hit a Hamas mortar unit that had fired first, but that an errant Israeli shell hit near the school.

The army later rebutted the article, saying its initial inquiry showed “mortars were fired from within the school” at Israeli forces nearby, “and those forces returned fire.”

United Nations officials have denied that any Palestinian fighters were in the school grounds and called for an independent international investigation, and the army had earlier gone back and forth about whether the Hamas mortars were fired within the school or near it.

Steven Erlanger and Ethan Bronner reported from Jerusalem. Taghreed El-Khodary contributed reporting from Gaza City, Sabrina Tavernise from Jerusalem. and Alan Cowell from London.