Editor’s Note: This video contains graphic content. An Israeli airstrike kills at least 10 people and wounds scores of others at a U.N. school in the southern Gaza Strip, a Palestinian official says. (Reuters)
GAZA CITY – An Israeli airstrike killed a militant leader in the Gaza Strip on Monday just ahead of an unilateral cease-fire put in place by Israel for most of the day for large parts of the devastated Palestinian enclave.
Israel announced the unilateral pull-back as it showed signs of scaling back its ground offensive in Gaza, one day after harsh international condemnation of yet another Israeli airstrike outside a U.N. school in southern Gaza, which killed at least 10 people. The strike Sunday marked the seventh on a U.N. school where refugees were sheltering in nearly a month of fighting.
An Israeli Defense Forces statement said the Israeli cease-fire would last from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. local time. It would apply everywhere in the beleaguered Gaza Strip, except areas of the southern town of Rafah, where ground forces have stepped up their assaults after three Israeli soldiers died in an ambush by Hamas, the militant Palestinian group that runs Gaza, on Friday. Israel said it would respond to any attacks, however.
The Islamic Jihad group, a close ally of Hamas, said the leader of its northern flank, Daniel Mansour, 44, died in an Israeli airstrike on his home just before dawn Monday.
Sunday’s bloodshed at the school sparked some of the harshest U.S. criticism of Israel since the war began.
Almost a month after Israel launched Operation Protective Edge, life in the Palestinian territory is becoming increasingly difficult. Residents are struggling with power outages and a lack of basic supplies.
Capt. Eytan Buchman, a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces, said the targets of the attack in the border city of Rafah were three Palestinian militants riding past the school on a motorcycle. “We identified a successful hit on the target,” Buchman said. “We definitely don’t target civilians or schools.”
But according to eyewitnesses and U.N. officials, an Israeli missile struck just outside the gates of the school. About 3,000 Palestinians were seeking refuge at the facility, and a crowd of civilians had gathered outside — children buying ice cream from a sidewalk vendor, and men and women purchasing food or cigarettes, witnesses said.
The missile hit the motorcycle, said the witnesses, and then crashed into the road. Shrapnel flew in every direction, slicing into more than 40 people and killing at least seven civilians, including a boy. Presumably, the three militants Israel had targeted died, too. A U.N. employee was among those killed, said Adnan Abu Hasna, a spokesman for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, which is assisting more than 200,000 Palestinian evacuees at 90 schools in Gaza.
“There were bodies all over the ground, covered in blood,” recalled Muhamed Yafei, 45, an air-conditioner repairman who had been staying inside the school. Among the dead, he said, was the ice-cream vendor.
The youngest victim, Saqer Al-Kashif, 8, had walked outside to buy ice cream. He was severely wounded in the blast and later died of his injuries. His body, covered in a white shroud, was brought back Sunday afternoon to the school, where his father kissed his head before taking him to the cemetery.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called Sunday’s attack a “moral outrage and a criminal act.” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki, in an unusually harsh statement, said that “the United States is appalled by today’s disgraceful shelling” and urged Israel to do more to “avoid civilian casualties” and to protect U.N. facilities.
“The suspicion that militants are operating nearby does not justify strikes that put at risk the lives of so many innocent civilians,” she added. The State Department called for “a full and prompt investigation of this incident” as well as of the recent shelling of other U.N. schools, Psaki’s statement said.
The language was tougher than previous U.S. government reactions to attacks on the U.N. schools in Gaza. Last week, the White House condemned the shelling of a U.N. school that had left at least 20 dead, but it did not initially blame Israel.
Israel has not accepted responsibility for every assault, saying that some are under investigation or were caused by errant mortars or rockets fired by Hamas. U.N. officials have acknowledged discovering munitions in three of its schools since the conflict began.
Ashraf al-Kidra, a spokesman for the Gaza Health Ministry, said that at least 90 people were killed by Israeli strikes Saturday night and Sunday, mostly in Rafah, including nine members of a family. The Palestinian death toll in the conflict has risen to at least 1,806. Sixty-seven Israelis have been killed since the fighting began July 8, the vast majority of them soldiers.
‘An intolerable price’
Sunday’s bloodshed came as Israel said it had withdrawn most of its ground forces from Gaza but would continue its military operation in the coastal strip.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had warned Hamas on Sunday night that it would pay “an intolerable price” for its assaults on Israel. He also indicated, however, that Israeli forces would reassess their mission after destroying Hamas’s tunnel networks.
In Netanyahu’s message, there were hints that Israel hopes to wrap up its Gaza campaign on its own terms, without brokering a truce with Hamas, much like Israel did in its last major ground incursion into Gaza 51/ 2 years ago.
Buchman, the Israel Defense Forces spokesman, said Sunday that Israel believed it was no more than 24 hours away from destroying the last known Hamas tunnel, but he would not confirm whether Israel intended to pull all its forces out of Gaza once that happened.
The partial pullback from Gaza reflected a shift of tactics for Israel, but analysts said it did not necessarily signal an approaching end to the conflict. Rather, they said, it was a recognition that ground troops had accomplished their mission and other goals can be more easily achieved from afar.
“The ground forces finished the job. They destroyed the tunnels. So there’s no point in keeping them there,” said Yosef Kuperwasser, former director general of Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs. “But it’s not that we’re easing the pressure on Hamas. The pressure on Hamas is still there.”
Israel has shown no indication it will pause its campaign of fire from the air and the sea, as evidenced by Sunday’s attack near the U.N. school. Hamas, too, has given little indication it will yield, firing at least 55 rockets toward Israel on Sunday.
No sign of an endpoint
Meantime, by boycotting truce talks in Cairo on Sunday, Israel has demonstrated that it has no interest in pursuing a diplomatic solution following a string of broken cease-fires that Israeli officials blame on Hamas.
“Hamas’s plan was that they were going to get something as a reward for their rocket launches,” Kuperwasser said, adding that Israel had been prepared to discuss the opening of Gaza border crossings that Hamas has long sought. “But now we’re saying, ‘If we can't trust you in even a short-term cease-fire, there’s no point in discussing these broader arrangements.’ ”
With no diplomatic solution in sight, a battle that has already lasted far longer than two previous conflicts between Hamas and Israel could continue indefinitely.
Witte reported from Jerusalem and Daniela Deane from Rome. Ruth Eglash in Jerusalem and Islam Abdel Karim in Gaza City contributed to this report.
Sudarsan Raghavan has been The Post's bureau chief in Africa since 2010. He began his career as a foreign correspondent in Africa, and covered the Iraq war as Baghdad bureau chief.
Griff Witte is The Post’s London bureau chief. He previously served as the paper’s deputy foreign editor and as the bureau chief in Kabul, Islamabad and Jerusalem.
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