Palestinians Flee Gaza's North as Cease-Fire Seems Elusive

Middle East |Palestinians Flee Gaza’s North as Cease-Fire Seems Elusive

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Palestinians fled their homes Sunday to seek shelter at a United Nations school in Gaza City. Mohammed Saber/European Pressphoto Agency

GAZA CITY — Several thousand Palestinians, defying the urging of Hamas to remain in their homes, fled from areas in northern Gaza early Sunday after Israel warned them through fliers and phone calls of major attacks to come.

Israel and Hamas seemed to signal little public interest in international appeals for a cease-fire as they continued their barrages. More than 100 rockets were fired out of Gaza into Israel on Sunday, with two intercepted over the Tel Aviv area, while the Palestinians expressed anger over the previous day’s Israeli bombings of a center for the disabled and a strike that killed 17 members of one extended family.

For the Gazans fleeing the north, some traveled in vehicles, some by donkey cart and some on foot. With some waving white flags, residents of areas around Beit Lahiya ventured south to seek shelter in United Nations-run schools, cramming into classrooms and piling desks out on balconies.

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Rafik Said al-Sultan, 44, came with his extended family, walking two hours to this school, carrying the youngest of his nine children, Omar, 17 months. “We left because of the terrifying bombing in the night and because of the fliers that warned that any moving body after noon will be struck,” he said.

Israeli soldiers sleeping in an army deployment area near Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip. Jack Guez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The leaflets warned residents in the north to evacuate their homes before what Israel’s military spokesman described as a “short and temporary” campaign against rocket launchers there sometime after noon. Hamas asked residents to remain in their homes and ignore “Israeli propaganda,” but many fled anyway.

Mr. Sultan looked over at the young woman next to him, and said: “I don’t need another tragedy; this is the fiancée of my son.” Three days ago, his son, Odai, 21, was killed in an Israeli rocket strike on the taxi he was driving, after having picked up two fares. Mr. Sultan said that he had no idea why it was attacked, and that it must have been the wrong car.

Isra Abbas, the fiancée, 17, was to marry Mr. Sultan’s son in September. “The 1948 Nakba is now happening every four years,” she said angrily, referring to the Palestinian exodus during the Arab-Israeli war.

“We pray to God there will be a truce, for our children and ourselves,” Mr. Sultan said, looking around the crowded classroom. “We can’t live here; there are no beds and few bathrooms, and men and women are here together.”

Down the hall, his nephew, Muhammad al-Sultan, 26, had come with his wife and two young daughters on a donkey cart early in the morning after air attacks on his farmland. He conceded that many rockets were fired toward Israel from the area around Beit Lahiya. “Many rockets go from there,” he said. “But Israel lands more on us.”

The assistant principal of the school arrived early Sunday morning, and the courtyard was already full of refugees, she said. “It was a shock,” she said, estimating that for the 31 classrooms she already had about 1,000 people. The principal, who argued briefly with a man whose family she said she had to turn away because the place was full, said she could not be quoted by name without United Nations permission.

On Sunday afternoon, a spokesman for UNRWA, the United Nations agency that deals with the refugees and operates the school, said that about 4,000 people were sheltering in eight schools, and that there was a capacity for 35,000 if necessary. Robert Turner, director of UNRWA operations, said “more are arriving by the minute,” mostly from areas around Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun.

Major Strikes So Far

Here are approximate locations of 19 major airstrikes that resulted in deaths since Israel began its air campaign on Tuesday. The Israeli military says it has struck more than 1,100 targets since it started the operation in response to waves of rockets being fired from Gaza.

6 people killed on Tuesday when two missiles struck the house of a man said to be an Islamic Jihad commander.

3 killed when war- planes targeted a car on Thursday. The three were said to be members of Al-Quds Brigades.

GAZA IS

ABOUT 25

MILES LONG

9 killed when a missile struck a cafe Wednesday night where about a dozen locals had gathered to watch the World Cup. Israeli military said the target was a single terrorist.

8 killed, including six children, when war-planes targeted their house on Thursday in Khan Younis refugee camp.

For Israel, poised between international appeals for a cease-fire and a decision on whether to send ground forces into Gaza, the goal now is to ensure a lengthy period of quiet from Gazan rockets, which badly wounded a 16-year-old in Ashkelon on Sunday. That can be achieved only by seriously degrading Hamas’s fighting capabilities, whether by military means or through diplomacy, Israeli officials say, and part of the strategy, they say, is causing substantial “pain” to Hamas and its leaders, whose houses, only some of which have weapons stores, Israel is bombing here.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who appeared on American talk shows on Sunday, emphasized that the Israeli Army was “prepared for any possibility” and that Israel wanted “sustainable quiet.” In remarks before the weekly cabinet meeting, he said, “I don’t know when the operation will end; it might take much more time.”

There is little appetite for a return to the cease-fire of November 2012, which lasted little over a year and a half. Yuval Steinitz, the minister for strategic affairs, told Israel Radio that the immediate goal is “quiet,” but “the strategic goal is demilitarization.” He added, “We have to finally not be satisfied with a temporary filling, but do a root canal.”

But as the bombing and rocketing continued, there was growing international pressure on Israel to settle for a cease-fire, called for by France, Britain and a nonbinding resolution of the United Nations. Those calls were intensified by the bombing of a center for the disabled early Saturday, killing some of the residents, and the mass funeral on Sunday of 17 members of one extended family, killed in a bombing late Saturday as Israel tried to kill Gen. Tayseer al-Batsh, the Hamas police chief. General Batsh, who was seriously wounded, was visiting his aunt’s house after attending prayers in a mosque. Two bombs reduced the three-story house to rubble, neighbors said, and sent body parts at least 100 yards.

Local officials and relatives searched Sunday for more bodies before burying the family and a neighbor in a row of 18 graves dug in the same compound. Mahmoud al-Batsh, 48, a relative, said it was considered too dangerous now to bury them in the cemetery, which is near the border with Israel in northeast Gaza. “The Jews don’t differentiate between the police commander and ordinary citizens,” he said. Some argued in the heat whether the row of graves, dug Sunday morning and lined with cement blocks, was sufficiently aligned with Mecca.

In addition to members of the extended family, including seven children, a neighbor also was killed. Scores were wounded by shattered glass and explosive compression. There was no advance warning, residents said; Israeli officials have said they do not warn prime targets who they are trying to kill.

Munzer al-Batsh, the police commander’s brother and a gardener, said at the scene: “The Jews eliminated an entire family: grandfather, father, mother, even the children, who were sleeping in the homes. They were civilians.” He said he heard the bombs but could not see for the smoke and dust. When it cleared, he said: “There was a three-story house wiped out. I couldn’t remember at first that there was a house there.”

An explosion in the northern Gaza Strip on Sunday after an Israeli airstrike. Ammar Awad/Reuters

The death toll among Palestinians is 158, at least half of them noncombatants, and more than 1,100 people have been hurt, the health ministry said.

Abdallah al-Frangi, the Fatah official appointed governor of Gaza last month under a unity government with Fatah and Hamas, was there, too. He condemned the conflict, which he said Israel had started, and asked the United States to intervene. “The Americans are the people who can do it if they want,” he said. “Netanyahu doesn’t want to negotiate with the Palestinians and doesn’t want a Palestinian state next door.” Asked why he could not convince Hamas to stop firing rockets, Mr. Frangi said: “We cannot ask Hamas while Israel is continuing this aggression. If Israel will stop, I’m sure Hamas will stop.”

But Israeli military officials want to hit Hamas hard to ensure a longer lull before another round. “This operation has the potential for bringing a longer period of quiet by causing critical damage to the infrastructure,” a senior military official told reporters on Sunday.

Some Israeli security experts argue that Israel’s goals cannot be achieved without a ground invasion. If the objective is “to clean the territory,” said Gabi Siboni of the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, “the way to do it is to activate all your forces.” Hamas has a huge arsenal of weapons of all types, including anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles, besides its thousands of remaining rockets, according to military officials. Many of the rockets and launchers are buried deep underground, they say, making it hard to destroy them from the air.

But Hamas is not an easy enemy to fight on the ground in a crowded urban setting. Hamas has built a network of tunnels and booby traps, and has long threatened to capture Israeli soldiers as bargaining chips for the release of prisoners. But it is also hard to eliminate rocket launchers from the air. Most rockets are loaded underground and launched through narrow slits in the areas between crowded houses, and those who launch them enter and exit the tunnels from other houses.

Hamas has its own motivations, said Mkhaimar Abusada of Al-Azhar University here. “Hamas has been politically isolated” since the military coup in Egypt closed down the tunnels and the Rafah crossing, he said. And Israel has tightened controls over Gaza since the November 2012 agreement after it discovered a Hamas tunnel into Israel six months ago, he said. At the same time, “the unity government with Fatah has done nothing for Gaza or Hamas,” which can no longer pay full salaries to its 40,000 employees.

“So Hamas’s main goal from this conflict is to end the siege,” Mr. Abusada said. “It can no longer survive this way, feeling suffocated by Israeli and blockaded by Egypt and ignored by Abu Mazen,” the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. For now, Mr. Abusada said, with Hamas political figures in hiding, the military wing is calling the shots. Any cease-fire deal, he said, will have to be done with the Hamas political chief, Khaled Meshal, who lives in Qatar.

As for a ground operation to destroy Hamas’s rocket capability, “Israel would have to go deep into Gaza, and that would be very costly to civilians, and I don’t think the United States and the West are willing to absorb that much bloodshed,” Mr. Abusada said.

Steven Erlanger reported from Gaza, and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem. Reporting was contributed by Fares Akram from Gaza, and by Kareem Fahim and Merna Thomas from Cairo.