Netanyahu says tunnels must be destroyed
Print Edition
ISRAELI Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, facing international alarm over a rising civilian death toll in Gaza, said yesterday he would not accept any cease-fire that stopped Israel completing the destruction of militants’ infiltration tunnels.
The Israeli military estimated on Wednesday that accomplishing that task, already in its fourth week, would take several more days.
“We are determined to complete this mission, with or without a cease-fire,” Netanyahu said at a cabinet meeting in Tel Aviv.
“I won’t agree to any proposal that will not enable the Israeli military to finish this important task, for the sake of Israel’s security.”
Leaving open the option of widening a ground campaign in the Hamas Islamist-dominated Gaza Strip, the Israeli military said it had called up an additional 16,000 reservists. A military source said they would relieve a similar number of reserve soldiers being stood down.
On Wednesday, Netanyahu’s security cabinet approved continuing operations launched on July 8 in response to a surge of cross-border rocket attacks. Israel also sent a delegation to Egypt, which has been trying, with US blessing, to broker a cease-fire.
Washington has also, however, allowed Israel to tap a local US arms stockpile in the past few weeks to replenish its grenades and mortar rounds, a US defense official said yesterday.
US Secretary of State John Kerry, who failed in a visit to the region last week to secure a cease-fire, voiced support for Israel’s operations against the tunnels.
“No country can sit there and live with tunnels being dug under its border, out of which jump people who are carrying handcuffs and tranquilizer drugs in order to kidnap their citizens and hold them for ransom,” Kerry said in an interview broadcast by India’s NDTV.
Gaza officials say at least 1,394 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed in the territory and nearly 7,000 wounded. Fifty-six Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza clashes and more than 400 wounded. Three civilians have been killed by Palestinian shelling in Israel.
On Wednesday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon strongly condemned the deaths of at least 15 Palestinians among thousands sheltering at a UN-run school. The United Nations said its initial assessment was that Israeli artillery shells hit the facility.
The UN’s senior human rights official, Navi Pillay, said yesterday that Israel has attacked homes, schools, hospitals, and UN premises in apparent violation of the Geneva Conventions.
Pillay said Israel’s actions seemed to be in “deliberate defiance of obligations that international law imposes.”
Israel said its forces were attacked by guerrillas near the school in northern Jabalya and had fired back.
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