BOTH SIDES REPORT DEADLIEST DAY IN GAZA WAR

Tyler Hicks, N.Y. Times

N.Y. TIMES

According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, Sunday was the bloodiest day for both Palestinians and Israelis. 13 Israelis died during the ground operations, and 60 to 87 Palestinians were killed. Most of the Palestinians killed were in the eastern neighborhood of Gaza City called Shejaiya. The Palestinian government said in a statement that the deaths were a “heinous massacre.” Of the 13 Israelis killed, at least two were dual U.S.-Israeli nationals, according to the Times of Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stressed Israeli ground operations were targeted at militants, but highlighted Hamas' tactic of using human shields. "All civilian casualties are unintended by us, but intended by Hamas. They want to pile up as many civilian dead as they can,” he said. “It's gruesome.”

The death tolls and the withering assault on Shejaiya appeared to shake the international community, with world leaders continuing to carefully call for both sides to step back but with criticism of Israel rising. Within hours, President Obama had called the Israeli prime minister for the second time in three days, the United Nations Security Council had called an emergency session at the urging of the Palestinians, and Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had issued a statement calling the attack on Shejaiya “an atrocious action.” By early evening, the Obama administration announced that Secretary of State John Kerry would head to Cairo to meet with Egyptian officials in an attempt to negotiate a cease-fire to end the bloodshed.

An injured Palestinian family cram into a car as they arrive at al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City. Early this morning, the wounded from Shijaiyah were rushed to Gaza City's central Shifa Hospital

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In Shejaiya, the panic Sunday was palpable. Some of the men, women and children who streamed out of the area were barefoot. Israeli shells crashed all around, rockets fired by Palestinian militants soared overhead in the direction of Israel and small-arms fire whizzed past. Asked where they were going, one woman said, “God knows.”

As the day wore on and the casualties mounted, it became apparent that what had begun on Thursday night as a limited ground invasion to follow 10 days of intense airstrikes had developed into a more extensive and dangerous phase for both sides.

 Despite the growing international alarm, Israel’s political and military leaders said that while acknowledging the pain for both sides, they were determined to continue with their mission. They have said the offensive is meant to root out Hamas’s vast network of underground tunnels, many of them leading into Israel, and to quell the rocket fire from Gaza, which continued on Sunday. Mr. Netanyahu appears to have the support of many Israelis, who were particularly shaken in recent days when militants used what the government had warned were “terror tunnels” to infiltrate their country.

A Palestinian family collected belongings from the rubble of their home in Rafah after it was struck by air missiles. Credit Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times        

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The hospital grounds were crowded with displaced families sitting on the grass. Taghreed Harazin, 34, sat under a gazebo with her 6-month-old son, Diaa, in the car seat in which she had carried him on foot until finding a taxi. She said she had believed the evacuation order was only for the eastern part of the neighborhood, and mistakenly thought she would be safe at home. Moving was frightening, she said, because of airstrikes.

But during the night, heavy shelling started. They went to the basement for three hours, then ventured out at dawn.

As the family dashed through the streets to avoid crashing shells, Ms. Harazin, said, she saw the decapitated body of a boy who looked about 4.

“We are not Hamas, and we are not with the others,” Ms. Harazin said. “We just want to live in our homes.”

Asked what she thought of Hamas’s handling of the current war, she said, “Sometimes it’s difficult to express your opinion.” She said her husband had been beaten for complaining about Hamas.

In Israel, the mood was grim but determined. The military, suffered its heaviest loss in a single day since the 2006 war in Lebanon. Three soldiers died trapped in a burning building. “It was a real battle there,” said a senior military official,  “They were hiding in the apartments, shooting at the Israeli soldiers from the apartments, from the houses, from the windows.”

DAILY BEAST
  
Israel Invaded Gaza Over Tunnels Like These:

Mustafa Hassona/Anadolu Agency/Getty Image

 

 

 

 Since Israel withdrew its settlements from Gaza in 2005, it has tried to stop locals there from building a network of tunnels into Egypt to import weapons, cash and fuel. This week, Israel discovered something more harrowing: tunnels into Israel to launch attacks.

On Thursday, the Israel Defense Forces thwarted an attack of 13 Palestinian gunmen who emerged near Kibbutz Sufa near the border. By that evening, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered a ground invasion into Gaza with the limited goal of destroying those tunnels.
Of course, the tunnels aren’t the only reason for the latest Israeli assault on Gaza; tensions have been mounting for months. But they are a major one.

Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters

 

 

 

 

One of the Israeli officials said children, paid less than a dollar an hour, do most of the digging of the tunnels into Israel. But the networks of the tunnels are nonetheless sophisticated. In some cases, tunnels have make shift railway tracks, this official said. This official also said the tunnels featured crude telephone wires because Hamas knows that their wireless communications would be intercepted by Israel.
The entrances to the tunnels are often in the garages of personal homes or inside greenhouses to obscure the opening of the tunnel from Israel’s overhead surveillance.