Speaking at a news conference in Cairo, where the diplomatic efforts were under way, the Hamas leader, Khaled Meshal, suggested that the Israeli infantry mobilization on the border with Gaza was a bluff on the part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.
“If you wanted to launch it, you would have done it,” Mr. Meshal told reporters. He accused Israel of using the invasion threat as an attempt to “dictate its own terms and force us into silence.”
Wissam Nasser for The New York Times
Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
Wissam Nasser for The New York Times
Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
Wissam Nasser for The New York Times
Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
Pavel Wolberg for the New York Times
A Palestinian woman looked out after an Israeli air raid in Gaza City.
By FARES AKRAM, JODI RUDOREN and ALAN COWELL
Published: November 19, 2012
GAZA CITY — The top leader of Hamas dared Israel on Monday to launch a ground invasion of Gaza
and dismissed diplomatic efforts to broker a cease-fire in the
six-day-old conflict, as the Israeli military conducted a new wave of
deadly airstrikes on the besieged Palestinian
enclave, including a second hit on a 15-story building that houses
media outlets. A volley of rockets fired from Gaza into southern Israel
included one that hit a vacant school.
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Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
A funeral was held on Monday for the Dalu family, a
day after an Israeli bomb killed nine in three generations of the
family.
Speaking at a news conference in Cairo, where the diplomatic efforts were under way, the Hamas leader, Khaled Meshal,
suggested that the Israeli infantry mobilization on the border with
Gaza was a bluff on the part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of
Israel.
“If you wanted to launch it, you would have done it,” Mr. Meshal told
reporters. He accused Israel of using the invasion threat as an attempt
to “dictate its own terms and force us into silence.”
Rejecting Israel’s contention that Hamas had precipitated the conflict,
Mr. Meshal said the burden was on the Israelis. “The demand of the
people of Gaza is meeting their legimitate demands — for Israel to be
restrained from its aggression, assassinations and invasions, and for
the siege over Gaza to be ended,” he said.
Mr. Netanyahu met with top ministers Monday evening and Israeli media
said they discussed the next steps in the Gaza conflict, including the
possibility of a truce. Israeli officials declined to comment on those
reports.
The Hamas Health Ministry said Monday evening that a total of 107 people
had been killed since Wednesday morning, when Israeli airstrikes began,
following months of Palestinian rocket fire into Israel. A spokeswoman
for the Israeli military said she believed that a majority of these were
militants, though it is difficult to know because Hamas’s own fighting
brigade and the other factional groups are secretive.
The Hamas ministry said that the dead included at least 26 children, 10
women and 12 men over 50, who were presumably not involved in combat. Of
the remainder, at least 36 are known militants. Hamas officials said
more than 860 have been wounded, 260 of them children, 140 of them women
and 55 men over 50.
Three people have been killed so far in Israel, all civilians, in a
rocket strike that hit an apartment house in the southern Israeli town
of Kiryat Malachi on Thursday morning. The Israelis have said that at
least 79 Israelis have been wounded and that Gaza rockets have reached
as far north as Tel Aviv.
The latest Gaza casualties — 22 people reported killed since midnight
local time — included Palestinians killed in strikes by warplanes, a drone attack
on two men on a motorcycle, and a father and two toddler sons in their
bombed northern Gaza home, witnesses and medical sources said. Another
Israeli drone attack killed the driver of a taxi hired by journalists
and displaying “Press” signs, although it was not clear which
journalists had hired it, Palestinian officials said.
On Sunday, Israeli forces attacked two buildings housing local
broadcasters and production companies used by foreign outlets. Israeli
officials denied targeting journalists, and said that a second attack on
one of the buildings, known as Al Sharouk, had targeted an office of
the Islamic Jihad, killing four militants. The attack also hit a
computer shop, sparking a blaze that sent plumes of dark smoke creeping
up the sides of the building. Video footage showed clouds of smoke
billowing.
An Israeli bomb pummeled a home deep into the ground here on Sunday,
killing 11 people, including nine in three generations of a single
family, in the deadliest single strike since the latest conflict began.
Members of the family were buried Monday in a rite that turned into a
gesture of defiance and became a rally supporting Gaza’s militant Hamas
rulers.
A militant leader said Tel Aviv, in the Israeli heartland, would be hit
“over and over” and warned Israelis that their leaders were misleading
them and would “take them to hell.”
Israel says its onslaught is designed to stop Hamas from launching the
rockets, but, after an apparent lull overnight, more missiles hurtled
toward targets in Israel, some of them intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome
defense system. Of five rockets fired on Monday at the southern Israeli
city of Ashkelon, four were intercepted but one smashed through the
concrete roof at the entrance to an empty school. There were no reports
of casualties. Other rockets rained on areas along the border with Gaza.
Later a second salvo struck Ashkelon. Several rockets were intercepted,
but one crashed down onto a house, causing damage but no casualties.
Israeli officials said 135 rockets were fired from Gaza at Israel on
Monday, of which 42 were intercepted by Iron Dome, Most of the others
landed in open areas.
On Sunday, a new volley of Palestinian rockets totaled nearly 100 by
nightfall, including two that soared toward Tel Aviv but were knocked
out of the sky by Israeli defenses.
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