From BBC

Israel launched its offensive on 8 July, saying its aim was to stop Hamas firing rockets across the border

Israel’s security cabinet has rejected a Gaza ceasefire proposal put forward by US Secretary of State John Kerry “as it stands”.

Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon said ground operations in Gaza could soon be broadened “significantly”.

Mr Kerry said he still hoped for an initial seven-day truce next week.

Hamas, the Islamist group which controls Gaza, said earlier it would not accept a deal without an end to Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip.

More than 800 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and 36 Israelis have died since the start of the conflict between Israel and Hamas which entered its 18th day on Friday.

A senior Israeli official told the BBC that Mr Yaalon and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were “considering a 12-hour humanitarian ceasefire” in Gaza.

An unnamed US official, quoted by reporters in Cairo, said Mr Netanyahu had told Mr Kerry that Israel would begin the 12-hour pause on Saturday.

Gaza continued to bury its dead on Friday. These mourners were at a funeral in Beit Hanoun

Israel’s military losses climbed after it started a ground operations. This funeral of a soldier took place in Rehovot

Israeli airstrikes on Gaza continued on Friday. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had killed a senior member of the militant group Islamic Jihad.

The IDF also said its Iron Dome defence system had intercepted several rockets fired across the border by Hamas.

Israel launched its military offensive on 8 July with the declared objective of stopping Hamas firing rockets into Israel.

It has since extended its operation to destroy tunnels dug by militants to infiltrate Israel.

Rioting has erupted for the second night running at the Qalandia checkpoint in the West Bank, where 10,000 protesters massed on Thursday, clashing with Israeli border police.

Stones have been thrown and there has been some fire from the Israeli side, the BBC’s Jon Donnison reports.

In other developments

• Clashes between Palestinian protesters on the one hand, and Israeli security forces and Jewish settlers on the other, left five Palestinians dead in the West Bank

• Israel was accused of war crimes in a complaint lodged on behalf of the Palestinians with the International Criminal Court in The Hague

• Rallies in support of the Palestinians were held in European and Middle Eastern cities, as well as a pro-Israeli rally in Berlin

John Kerry said diplomatic efforts would continue in Paris on Saturday

Israel has extended its operations to destroy tunnels on the Gaza-Israeli border, allegedly dug by militants to launch attacks on Israel. Here an officer walks by the mouth of one such tunnel

Air strikes continued against targets in Gaza on Friday

Some 700 pro-Israel demonstrators held a rally in Berlin, AP news agency reports

A really by pro-Palestinian protesters in the German capital drew about 1,200 people, AP says

‘Agony’

Israel’s Channel 1 TV reported that the cabinet had unanimously rejected the truce proposal “as it stands”.

Just after Mr Kerry spoke to reporters, the Israeli defence minister’s office issued a statement in which he was quoted as telling soldiers in the field: “You need to be ready for the possibility that very soon we will instruct the military to significantly broaden the ground operation in Gaza.”

Mr Kerry said he was confident Mr Netanyahu was committed to finding a solution and that the “agony” of the situation for both Gaza and Israel could not be overstated.

There was, he said, “still some terminology… to work through” but he was confident there was a “fundamental framework that can and will ultimately work”.

“We believe that seven days will give all the parties the opportunity to step back from the violence and focus on the underlying causes,” he said.

He was speaking after talks in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, with Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry and UN chief Ban Ki-moon, who likewise called for the seven-day “humanitarian” truce to coincide with the Muslim Eid holiday.

For the UN, Mr Ban said progress was being made but much more work remained.

Mr Kerry said he would be in Paris on Saturday to continue talks with other players on achieving a ceasefire.

For more on this story go to:  http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28494081

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UN’s Navi Pillay warns of Israel Gaza ‘war crimes’

From BBC

The UN’s top human rights official has condemned Israel’s military actions in the Gaza Strip, saying that war crimes may have been committed.

Navi Pillay told an emergency debate at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva that Israel’s military offensive had not done enough to protect civilians.

She also condemned Hamas for “indiscriminate attacks” on Israel.

Israel launched its offensive on 8 July with the declared objective of stopping rocket fire from Gaza.

“There seems to be a strong possibility that international law has been violated, in a manner that could amount to war crimes,” Ms Pillay said.

However Israel, which claims the UN Human Rights Council is biased, is unlikely to co-operate with any authorised UN investigation, the BBC’s Imogen Foulkes in Geneva reports.

Palestinians fled an Israeli ground offensive in Khan Younis on Wednesday

Empty arrival lounge of Ben Gurion international airport, near Tel Aviv, on 23 July 2014

Some European and US airlines suspended flights to Israel’s Ben Gurion airport after a rocket landed nearby

Israel’s Justice Minister, Tzipi Livni, said her country was acting according to international law.

“It is regrettable civilians are killed, but when we call on them to vacate and Hamas calls on them to stay, then that is what happens,” she told Israel radio.

Ms Livni also described the UN Human Rights Council as an “anti-Israel” body.

‘Heart-wrenching split’

At least 649 Palestinians and 31 Israelis have been killed in the past 15 days of fighting, officials say. A foreign worker in southern Israel was also killed by a rocket fired from Gaza on Wednesday, police said.

The UN says about 74% of those killed in Gaza are civilians, with medical clinics among the facilities hit by air strikes.

Kyung-wha Kang, the assistant secretary-general at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said civilians in Gaza had no safe to place to go “as 44% of the land has been declared a ‘no-go zone’ by the Israeli army”.

“Families are taking the heart-wrenching decision to split to different locations – mother and son to one; father and daughter to another – hoping to maximise the chance one part of the family survives.”

Ms Pillay said an attack on a Gaza beach that killed several children may have violated humanitarian law

Three civilians in Israel and 29 Israeli soldiers have been killed over the last 15 days

There was heavy fighting in the town of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on Wednesday. At least five people died in an air strike in the town overnight. An Israeli soldier was also killed.

Witnesses say around 5,000 Palestinians, some waving white flags, are fleeing in a state of panic following a ground incursion by Israeli troops, the BBC’s Paul Adams in Gaza reports.

A Palestinian woman whom the BBC filmed being pulled from the rubble of a Gaza blast on Sunday also died from her injuries, her doctor said. Ten of her relatives were killed in the blast.

Meanwhile US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Israel on Wednesday to try to help negotiate a truce.

UN Human Rights boss Navi Pillay says Israel’s military actions in Gaza “could amount to war crimes”

Mr Kerry flew by military plane to Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv. Several US and European airlines continue to suspend civilian flights into Israel after a rocket from Gaza landed near the airport.

German airline Lufthansa announced on Wednesday it would extend the ban for another 24 hours.

‘Hamas accountable’

Referring to a 16 July Israeli air strike that killed children playing on a beach in Gaza, Ms Pillay said “the disregard for international humanitarian law and for the right to life was shockingly evident”.

She also condemned rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel, accusing Hamas and other armed Palestinian groups of failing to observe “the principles of distinction and precaution”.

Are Israeli air strike warnings effective? The BBC examines footage from both sides

Despite her condemnation of Hamas attacks on Israel, Ms Pillay clearly views Israel’s actions in Gaza as disproportionate, our correspondent says.

Earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Hamas should be held accountable for rejecting an Egyptian ceasefire proposal.

A 2009 UN human rights report said that Israel’s military and Hamas had each committed potential war crimes during Israel’s 2008-2009 offensive in Gaza. The Goldstone report was rejected by Israel and the US as biased and flawed.

In 2011, the report’s author, South African judge Richard Goldstone, said that new accounts indicated Israel had not deliberately targeted civilians.

For more on this story go to: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28437626

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U.N. shelter in Gaza shelled, killing at least 15; cease-fire elusive

By Alexandra Zavis And Batsheva Sobelman, Los Angeles Times From The Sacramento Bee

Last Modified: Thursday, Jul. 24, 2014 – 6:21 pm

GAZA CITY – With a cease-fire accord remaining elusive despite intense diplomatic efforts, a U.N. shelter in northern Gaza was shelled on Thursday, causing “multiple deaths and injuries,” according to a spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency.

At least 15 people were killed and scores hurt when a school compound in Beit Hanoun, designated as a haven for the displaced, was bombarded by Israeli forces amid heavy fighting with Palestinian militants, a Gaza health official said.

Chris Gunness, a spokesman for the U.N. Refugee and Works Agency, or UNRWA, tweeted that the precise coordinates of the shelter had been relayed to Israeli forces. The strike on the compound was not immediately confirmed by the Israeli military.

Earlier, the Palestinian death toll in Gaza rose above 720 in overnight and early-morning bombardment. Meanwhile, militants fired a flurry of rockets into Israeli territory, with most either falling harmlessly or intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome antimissile defense system.

In the 17th day of the confrontation between Israeli forces and the militant group Hamas, regional mediators continued to work toward a halt to the fighting.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry, back in Cairo after a day of shuttle diplomacy in Israel and the West Bank, was conferring Thursday with Egyptian officials, according to Egyptian media reports.

British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, in Israel for talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, expressed hopes for a speedy truce. While acknowledging Israel’s right to defend itself, Hammond said his government was “gravely concerned by the ongoing heavy level” of civilian deaths and injuries in Gaza.

“We want to see a cease-fire quickly agreed,” he said.

Netanyahu said Israel was trying to minimize civilian casualties, but declared that “we cannot give our attackers immunity or impunity.” He did not mention the efforts to strike a truce.

Israel said it had detained dozens of suspected militants overnight in Gaza, and Israeli media carried images of the captured men in their underwear being marched toward or across the frontier, bound for a military detention center in southern Israel.

Israeli media reports also cited military sources as saying that 500 militants affiliated with Hamas or other Islamist armed groups have been killed since the start of the offensive. However, the United Nations and others have estimated that up to three-quarters of the dead are civilians, many of them women and children.

For a third day on Thursday, many international flights to and from Tel Aviv were canceled, after a rocket fell Tuesday near Ben Gurion International Airport. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration late Wednesday lifted a ban on American carriers flying into or out of Ben Gurion, and European aviation safety authorities followed suit on Thursday. However, many of the day’s arrivals had already been scrapped.

Israel’s summer tourism season, already dampened by the outbreak of fighting, has been hit hard by the curtailed air service, and industry officials, including those in Israel’s high-tech sector, have voiced concerns about long-term economic damage. Hamas has trumpeted the flight suspensions as an important military success.

While most of Israel’s casualties have been military, with 32 troops killed to date, three civilians have died on the Israeli side of the frontier. After a Thai farm worker was killed Wednesday by a mortar in the fields of a farm community close to Gaza, Thailand urged Israel to transfer some 4,000 of its nationals to safer areas and provide better protection for them.

Los Angeles Times staff writer Zavis reported from Gaza City and special correspondent Sobelman reported from Jerusalem. Times staff writer Laura King contributed to this report from Cairo.

For more on this story go to: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/07/24/6579619/un-shelter-in-gaza-shelled-killing.html#storylink=cpy