- UN secy gen urges Jewish state to take a hard look at some of the root causes of violence
- Netanyahu says world must hold Hamas responsible for starting the violence and for rejecting an Egyptian ceasefire initiative laid out last week
- Israel hits hundreds of targets in Gaza as soldier is confirmed missing
- Palestinian death toll tops 600, with 27 Israeli soldiers killed
UN chief Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday urged Israel and the Palestinians to stop the bloodshed in Gaza as he sought to broker an end to a fortnight of deadly violence which rose by 33 during another day of Israeli shelling and airstrikes, bringing the total to 604. Speaking at a news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after arriving in Tel Aviv, Ban described Hamas rocket fire on Israel as “shocking,” saying it must “stop immediately”.
“My message to Israelis and Palestinians is the same: Stop fighting, start talking and take on the root causes of the conflict so that we are not at the same situation in the next six months or a year,” he said.
The secretary-general said he had seen photographic and video evidence of Palestinian rocket fire on Israel, describing it as “quite shocking” and saying all countries had an “international obligation to protect” their citizens.
“The UN position is clear: we condemn strongly rocket attacks. These must stop immediately,” he said.
But Israel must exercise “maximum restraint,” Ban said as the body count in Gaza soared over 600, with majority of the victims being women and children.
And he urged the Jewish state to take a hard look at some of the root causes of the violence.
“We must address the underlying issues including mutual recognition, occupation, despair and denial of dignity so people will not feel they have to resort to violence as a means of expressing their grievances,” he said.
Netanyahu said the world must hold Hamas responsible for starting the violence and for rejecting an Egyptian ceasefire initiative laid out last week.
“The international community must take a clear stance, it must hold Hamas accountable for consistently rejecting these ceasefire proposals and for starting and prolonging this conflict,” Netanyahu said.
Hamas was not only guilty of attacking Israeli civilians but also of “using Palestinian civilians as human shields, deliberately putting them in harm’s way”.
“They are committing a double war crime: both targeting our civilians and hiding behind their civilians,” said Netanyahu.
“The people of Gaza are the victims of the brutal Hamas regime. They are holding them hostage and hiding behind them.”
Hamas said it rejected last week’s Egyptian-brokered truce because it had been excluded from discussions and did not receive any official proposal.
SOLDIER MISSING:
Meanwhile, Israel reported one of its soldiers missing in action as the army’s assault on Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip entered its third week on Tuesday.
The Health Ministry in Gaza said the Palestinian death toll rose by 33 during another day of Israeli shelling and airstrikes, bringing the total to 604. Another 3,700 Palestinians have been wounded, it said.
Israel’s casualties mounted as well. The army said one of its soldiers died Tuesday in a firefight in southern Gaza, bringing the number of army fatalities to 27. Two Israeli civilians have been killed by rocket fire since the army began intensive aerial bombardments of Gaza on July 8, followed by a ground assault in the coastal enclave that began last Thursday.
An Israeli defense official Tuesday said the missing soldier was one of seven members of an elite infantry unit inside an armored vehicle when it was severely damaged Sunday by Hamas fire in Gaza City’s embattled Shijaiyah neighborhood.
The official said it was unclear whether the soldier was dead or alive. In a statement, the army said only that it had completed the identification of six of the soldiers killed in the vehicle and that “efforts to identify the seventh soldier are ongoing and have yet to be determined.”
The disclosure raised the possibility that the soldier had been taken away, dead or alive, by Hamas militants.
Hamas’s armed wing said Sunday that an Israeli soldier named Shaul Aron had been seized in heavy fighting that day but didn’t say whether he was alive. The name is similar to that of Oron Shaul, a 21-year-old sergeant Israel has identified as the missing soldier. A Hamas spokesman displayed a photo ID and army serial number of the man but showed no image of him in captivity.
Since then, Israeli officials have said they could neither confirm nor deny Hamas’s claim.
As Israel tried to determine the fate of its missing soldier, fighting again raged Tuesday.
MORE THAN 100 ATTACKS:
Israeli forces attacked more than 187 rocket launchers and other militant targets, including more than 100 strikes in Shijaiyah, bringing to 1,715 the number of sites they have hit since ground operations began. The military also said it had uncovered 23 tunnels, with 66 access shafts.
Hamas and smaller Palestinian armed factions fired 25 rockets across the border into southern Israel, according to the Israeli army.