Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu
on Sunday ruled out the prospect of an immediate cease-fire with the Palestinians in the deadly flare-up of Middle Eastern violence, defying growing international demands for de-escalation and concerted mediation efforts by regional and world powers.
Civilian casualties mounted a week after fighting intensified, with at least 42 people killed in an apartment complex attack overnight, Palestinian officials said, the deadliest in seven days of an Israeli military operation. First responders in central Gaza City could be seen pulling bodies from the rubble as they searched for survivors and screams emanated from beneath the wreckage.
In Gaza, 192 people, including 58 children and 34 women, have been killed since Monday, according to the Palestinian health ministry. In Israel, 10 people, including one child, have been killed, according to Israel’s emergency response service. Israel has said that it has killed at least 75 Hamas militants. Hamas has fired more than 2,900 rockets at Israel since Monday.
New strikes were reported early Monday morning in Gaza City. The Israeli military’s
account said fighter jets targeted terrorist sites in what the Associated Press described as heavy airstrikes.
Mr. Netanyahu said Sunday that the Israel Defense Forces are seeking to degrade Hamas and its missile capabilities, and that operations wouldn’t be called off until that had been accomplished.
“We’re trying to degrade Hamas’s terrorist abilities and to degrade their will to do this again,” he said in a CBS interview. “So it’ll take some time. I hope it won’t take long, but it’s not immediate.”
Given Israel’s objective, international officials Sunday began to despair of finding a way to quickly end the hostilities and reach a cease-fire.
“We cannot allow the situation to slide further into chaos,” Tor Wennesland, the U.N. special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, said during an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council.
International officials said that a prolonged offensive would make a cease-fire more difficult both to achieve and to maintain.
“This latest round of violence only perpetuates the cycles of death, destruction and despair, and pushes farther to the horizon any hopes of coexistence and peace,” U.N. Secretary-General
António Guterres
said during Sunday’s U.N. meeting.
Riyad al-Maliki, the foreign minister of the Palestinian National Authority, said that Israel was committing war crimes. “Israel is unapologetic and relentless in pursuing its colonial policies,” he told the Security Council.
Mr. Netanyahu has described Hamas’s decision to launch rockets toward Jerusalem as a red line and said Sunday that while the campaign would take time, President Biden was backing the effort.
“We are continuing to act at this hour, for as long as it will take, to restore quiet and security,” he said, speaking at Israel’s military’s headquarters. “They talk about international pressure—there is always pressure but all in all we are getting very serious support.”
The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about Mr. Netanyahu’s assertion. Mr. Biden has said that he supports Israel’s right to defend itself against Hamas missile launches, and said Thursday that he hadn’t seen a “significant overreaction” by the Israelis.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield,
the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., on Sunday left the question of a cease-fire largely up to Israelis and Palestinians.
“The United States has made clear that we are prepared to lend our support and good offices should the parties seek a cease-fire,” she said.
The administration’s position drew criticism from some Democrats who said it failed to give equal weight to the right of Palestinian civilians to live peacefully.
“We must urge an immediate cease-fire. The killing of Palestinians and Israelis must end,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) said in a Twitter post, adding that the U.S. should review nearly $4 billion a year in military aid to Israel.
U.S. officials continued along several diplomatic tracks on Sunday, with Deputy Assistant Secretary of State
Hady Amr
holding meetings in Israel while Secretary of State
Antony Blinken
called counterparts in Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and elsewhere during a trip to Denmark.
The U.S. this weekend sought to work through diplomatic channels it opened in Cairo and Doha, Qatar, urging that intermediaries communicate to Hamas, which rules the Gaza strip, that it should unequivocally cease hostilities.
The U.S. message to Hamas, through Israel’s neighbors, is that rocket attacks must stop. “There isn’t a negotiating play here,” said a Western official familiar with the matter.
The U.S. doesn’t have direct contact with Hamas, which is designated by the U.S. as a terrorist organization. A small group of senior Egyptian officials are seen as the key to persuading Hamas to comply as part of a potential truce, the Western official added.
At a virtual celebration of the Eid al-Fitr holiday hosted by the White House on Sunday, President Biden reiterated that Israelis and Palestinians “equally deserve to live in safety and security, and enjoy equal measure of freedom, prosperity and democracy.”
“My administration is going to continue to engage Palestinians and Israelis and other regional partners to work toward sustained calm,” Mr. Biden told the closed gathering in pretaped remarks that were reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
Mr. Amr, who addressed the gathering from Jerusalem, said the Biden administration was making “a determined effort to halt the current violence gripping the West Bank and Gaza and Israel and to achieve a sustainable calm.”
“I want you to be assured that I will personally be working around the clock with my counterparts to ease tensions and end the crisis as soon as possible,” Mr. Amr said.
Israeli officials said their military campaign had made significant gains, including destroying all of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s rocket manufacturing sites. There were 31 such sites and Israel believes the groups won’t be able to produce more rockets in the short term, an Israeli Air Force general said.
The destruction of the four-building apartment complex overnight wasn’t intentional, Israel’s military said. It said the buildings collapsed after Israeli war planes struck “underground military infrastructure,” which caused the homes above it to collapse “leading to unintended casualties.”
Residents said the strike came without warning, unlike others in recent days, when Israeli officials called residents to warn them of an impending attack. “We’re innocent people,” said Adly Kolak, a resident who survived the bombing. “We have no connection with any party or organization.”
That incident and others, including a strike targeting the building in which the Associated Press was housed and another on a house in a refugee camp that killed 10 people, have alarmed diplomats and rights organizations who have called for Israel to de-escalate the nearly weeklong conflict.
The U.S., Europe and others have condemned Hamas and called on the group to stop firing rockets into Israel targeting Israel’s civilians.
—Anas Baba in Gaza City, Sabrina Siddiqui and Brett Forrest in Washington contributed to this article.
Write to Felicia Schwartz at felicia.schwartz@wsj.com and Jared Malsin at jared.malsin@wsj.com
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