Israel-Gaza conflict

Children watch from a window grate as Hamas militants attend a news conference in Gaza City. (Hatem Moussa / Associated Press)

CAIRO — Iran for years has supplied Hamas with weapons as part of its own struggle against Israel, but the conflict in the Gaza Strip reveals a shift in regional dynamics that may diminish Tehran’s influence with Palestinian militant groups and strengthen the hand of Egypt.

Israeli soldiers dance to music provided by visitors who turned up to show their support at the border with the Gaza Strip. (Christopher Furlong / Getty Images )

KIRYAT MALACHI, Israel — As the news sunk in Thursday that a cease-fire had ended an eight-day crisis that saw about 1,500 rockets launched from the Gaza Strip, Israelis began cleaning up, rebuilding and getting their lives back in some semblance of order.

Military flatbeds loaded with tanks headed north, away from Gaza, on Thursday as the Israeli government appointed two committees to help damaged communities and injured residents, tally the destruction and assess compensation. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged the panels to work “quickly and without bureaucracy.”

RAFAH, Gaza Strip — Seated on a muddy hill, Sulieman Masri glumly scanned the giant crater that was once a smuggling tunnel used to support his family.

After the Israeli airstrikes of the last week, Thursday morning was the first safe time to venture out. He discovered his tunnel was among 140 Israel destroyed. Now it’s now a massive sand pit coated with gray explosives residue. It would take two months to rebuild at the cost of $20,000.

“But I’ve heard that they are going to open the borders, which could put the tunnels out of business,” he said. “Now I don’t know what to do.”

Members of the Attar family, Palestinians who were displaced during the eight-day conflict with Israel, return to their home in the Atatra area in the northern Gaza Strip on Thursday, a day after a cease-fire took hold. (Marco Longari / AFP / Getty Images)

RAFAH, Gaza Strip – As the truce between Israel and Hamas appeared to be enduring through its first 24 hours, Gazans spent Thursday sweeping up, digging out and looking forward.

Hamas declared a public holiday, but most shops and many businesses opened their doors. Israeli warships were replaced on the horizon with Palestinian fishing boats for the first time in a week.

A wounded man is removed from the site of a bus bombing in Tel Aviv. (Oded Balilty / Associated Press )

TEL AVIV — A bus bombing in downtown Tel Aviv, the first in the city in years, injured 21 people Wednesday, shattering windows, nerves and illusions.

Coming after a handful of rocket strikes on the outskirts of Israel’s largest city in recent days, the attack reinforced the view that no one in the country is secure.

GAZA CITY It’s the building that refuses to die.

Constructed more than a decade ago, the Mukhabarat building on the northwest edge of Gaza City was once home to the Palestinian Authority’s super-secret intelligence service. It was abandoned in 2007 after the Hamas militant group seized the Gaza Strip and chased out the rival Fatah party.

Vacant ever since, the once-grand structure has become something of a running joke: Israel keeps striking it over and over, yet a good-sized chunk of the five-story frame simply won’t fall down.

Palestinians in Gaza City celebrate the cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas. (Oliver Weiken / European Pressphoto Agency)

GAZA CITY — An Egyptian-brokered cease-fire agreement to end eight days of clashes between Israel and the Islamist group Hamas in the Gaza Strip relies heavily on the goodwill of two of the Middle East’s bitterest enemies, but gave each enough to claim success.

By the time the truce took effect Wednesday evening, 162 Palestinians and five Israelis had died. Nearly half the Palestinian dead and all but one of the Israelis were civilians.

In a sign of the two sides’ lingering animosity, clashes continued right up to the deadline, with Hamas sending a barrage of rockets at several Israeli cites and Israeli aircraft pounding a few final targets in Gaza.

President Obama called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday to commend him for accepting an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire with Hamas, the White House said in a statement. It noted that Obama had urged Netanyahu to accept the deal.

A panoramic view of Gaza City at dusk. (Mohammed Saber / EPA)

Hamas and Israel agreed to a cease-fire that took effect Wednesday evening following a week of intense diplomacy to stop rocket fire and airstrikes that have pounded the Gaza Strip and Israel and raised fears of plunging the region into a wider war.

… The truce did not calm the deep animosities in the region, but it eased fears that there would be a repeat of the 2009 ground war that saw thousands of Israeli troops storm Gaza.

Egypt announced a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas effective Wednesday evening local time, the Associated Press reported.

In details of the agreement obtained by news agency, Israel will cease all military activity against the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip at 9 p.m. local time (11 a.m. PST) and Palestinian militants will cease rocket attacks into Israel. After 24 hours of quiet, Gaza’s border crossings with Israel will be opened further to allow freer movement of goods and people.

A Palestinian man surveys the ruins of a Hamas police station destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City on Tuesday. The weeklong clash has diverted attention from other Middle East conflicts and put existing alliances under pressure. (Oliver Weiken / European Pressphoto Agency)

A weeklong battle between Israel and Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip has turned the political kaleidoscope, shaking up and repositioning diplomatic forces tackling the Middle East’s myriad conflicts.

The broad alliance contending with the civil war in Syria has divided over who’s to blame for the latest Israeli-Palestinian clash. Egypt, no longer moving in lockstep with Washington after last year’s ouster of President Hosni Mubarak, is walking a fine line between defense of fellow Islamists in Hamas and commitment to the Arab-Israeli peace treaty. Tensions in Egypt’s Sinai have ratcheted up with an influx of Palestinians fleeing the airstrikes on Gaza. And what was seen for months as a grave threat for the region — Israel’s vow to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities — has faded from the headlines but not the horizon.

Police officers examine a bus targeted in a bombing in Tel Aviv. (Oded Balilty / Associated Press)

GAZA CITY — A bomb attack on a Tel Aviv public bus Wednesday injured at least 21 people — three seriously — shattering the sense of security in Israel’s second-largest city and raising questions about the fate of cease-fire talks underway to end the violence in the Gaza Strip.

The noon-time attack took place on a bus on a busy downtown street. Early reports from witnesses said a man was seen running toward the bus, throwing a bag inside and running away.

GAZA CITY — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton pressed for an end to rocket attacks on Israel and a durable regional peace as she arrived in the Middle East to join efforts to end a week of fighting between Israel and the Islamist militant group Hamas.

An agreement appeared close late Tuesday but proved elusive, and in the meantime violence continued. Hamas fired two more rockets toward Jerusalem but caused no damage or injuries. But rocket and mortar fire from the Gaza Strip killed an Israeli soldier and a Bedouin resident in southern Israel, increasing the Israeli death toll to five.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, pictured last week in the West Bank city of Ramallah, is expected to meet with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton about the conflict in Gaza. (Majdi Mohammed / Associated Pres)

RAMALLAH, West Bank — The hostilities in the Gaza Strip between Israel and Hamas have raised sympathy among many Palestinians for the Islamist militant group and elevated its status at the expense of the rival Palestinian Authority and its president, Mahmoud Abbas, observers say.

Abbas, who views himself as the leader of all Palestinians, has been sidelined as Hamas has taken center stage in the struggle against Israel and received a string of VIP visitors in Gaza, even as Israeli airstrikes continued to pound the Hamas-ruled strip.

Egypt's Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi, left, receives condolences from Coptic Christian priests at his sister's funeral in Sharqiya. Fighting between Israel and Hamas has put Morsi's government in the spotlight. (Egyptian President's Office)

CAIRO — The Gaza conflict has pressured Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi on many fronts: Each rocket Hamas fired into Israel has been a test of Morsi’s loyalty. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also been gauging how much damage he can inflict on Hamas before Morsi responds with more than public statements and diplomacy.

And the United States and the West, the source of billions of dollars in aid and possible investment that Egypt desperately needs, are watching to see whether the Egyptian president emerges as a formidable and trusted regional voice.

The sun sets over the central Gaza strip, as seen from a hill at the Israeli town of Sderot. (Lefteris Pitarakis / Associated Press )

GAZA CITY — Hopes rose Tuesday for a halt to hostilities after seven days of devastating fighting between Israel and Hamas, with officials from the militant group predicting a cease-fire would take effect at midnight.

But as the evening wore on, Israeli and Egyptian officials began downplaying expectations, warning that no deal had been signed

GAZA CITY — As Hamas continued its attacks against Israel on Tuesday with two rockets targeted at Jerusalem, Israeli and Egyptian officials signaled that a cease-fire agreement may be close.

Hamas officials claimed responsibility for the strikes, saying they used one of their new homemade M-75 rockets. As occurred last week, the rockets landed in the Gush Etzion area of the West Bank, south of Jerusalem. No damage or injuries were reported.

Attacks by Palestinian militants against Jerusalem previously were rare because the city is home to many Arab residents and some of the world’s most sacred religious and historical sites, including those of Islam.

Palestinians stand in the rubble of the Dalu family home after an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City. (Hatem Moussa / Associated Press)

GAZA CITY — An Israeli airstrike Sunday killed at least nine members of the same family — mostly women and children — in the deadliest single attack and worst civilian tragedy since the fighting in the Gaza Strip began last week.

President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, traveling in Asia, have spoken repeatedly with Mideast leaders and officials about the Gaza conflict. (Carolyn Kaster / Associated Press)

WASHINGTON — The increasingly bloody conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip is threatening the Obama administration’s plans to reinvigorate its Middle East diplomacy, creating new obstacles across the region as the president prepares for his second term.

With negotiators struggling to craft a cease-fire agreement, diplomats and experts say the strife is hampering administration efforts to help resolve the civil war in Syria, improve relations with Egypt’s new government, support moderate Palestinian leaders and check Iran’s growing ambitions.

In Gaza City, Palestinians carry the bodies of members of the Dalu family killed in an Israeli airstrike. (Oliver Weiken / European Pressphoto Agency)

As negotiators worked on a tenuous cease-fire deal, Israel and Hamas pounded each other for a sixth day and anger rose in the Gaza Strip over the increasing number of casualties.

Hopes for a truce grew Monday night when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened Cabinet members to discuss the details of what was said to be a multiphase, multiyear cease-fire agreement.

Officials in Egypt, where the talks were underway, expressed cautious optimism. Arab League leaders and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who was visiting the region, were trying to help negotiate a deal. The White House said President Obama, who is visiting Asia, called Netanyahu and Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi on Monday.

A missile is launched from a battery that's part of the Iron Dome system to intercept a rocket fired by Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip. (Ariel Schalit / Associated Press )

ASHDOD, Israel — School is out in this coastal city, Israel’s fifth-most populous, but the playgrounds are empty. Most shops in the Sea Mall shopping center are closed.

Halfway between Gaza City and Tel Aviv, Ashdod has been the target of rockets from the Gaza Strip during several days of hostilities between Israel and Hamas, the militant group that controls the strip. Between air raid sirens, citizens try to maintain some sense of normality, while staying within running distance of shelter.

Few people venture out unnecessarily.

But Omer Binyamin was sitting on the stairs outside the bank downtown the other day, a cigarette in one hand, his bank statement in the other.

“No way I’d be sitting out here in the open if it weren’t for Iron Dome,” said Binyamin, 32, a truck driver.

GAZA CITY – As tenuous cease-fire talks in Cairo continued, Israel and the Islamist group Hamas pounded one another Monday in the sixth day of clashes that have killed more than 100 Palestinians and three Israelis.

GAZA CITY — The olive orchards and wheat fields lining the Gaza Strip border with Israel were always sparsely populated, but on Monday the area was a virtual no-man’s land.

Fearing an Israeli ground invasion of the coastal strip, hundreds of families have fled.

“I don’t worry so much about the airstrikes, but I don’t want to be here when Israeli soldiers come,’’ said Iyad Badawi, 40, standing less than a mile from the border during a quick visit to his home to make sure everything was OK. During the last Israeli ground operation four years ago, a neighbor was killed, he noted. “No one’s coming back until there’s peace again.’’

GAZA CITY – Overnight hopes for an Egyptian-negotiated cease-fire faded Sunday as clashes resumed between Israel and Hamas and several Palestinian journalists were injured by Israeli airstrikes.

Smoke rises after an airstrike southeast of Gaza City that Israel says was aimed at a Hamas site. (Mohammed Saber / European Pressphoto Agency)

JABALIYA, Gaza Strip — Stepping over his daughter’s mangled teddy bear and pink bedroom curtains, math teacher Hossam Dadah salvaged what he could from the wreckage of his home and said he’s had enough.

Two of his children were hospitalized after Israeli airstrikes destroyed the three-story house next door, which was owned by a Hamas official.

“This has to end,” said Dadah, his black hair covered with concrete dust from the explosion. Hamas should quit while it’s ahead, he said.

Israeli troops gather near the border with the Gaza Strip. The country is gearing up for a possible ground invasion of the Palestinian territory. (Oliver Weiken / European Pressphoto Agency )

GAZA CITY — The bombardment seemed nearly constant: more than 250 airstrikes that blew out windows, peppered buildings with shrapnel and rattled nerves. But Gaza Strip residents said Israel’s targets appeared chosen primarily to send a message.

Israeli forces and the Islamist movement Hamas exchanged fire Friday for a third day, and appeared to inch closer to all-out conflict. A visit by Egypt’s prime minister failed to bring even a temporary lull in the fighting. And Palestinian militants continued to press Israel’s limits, for the first time firing two homemade rockets in the direction of Jerusalem.

Palestinian firefighters work at the scene of an Israeli air strike on a building in the Jebaliya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip. (Hatem Moussa / Associated Press)

GAZA CITY — Back-and-forth violence between Israel and Hamas left civilians on both sides digging out of rubble and broken glass Saturday as the conflict entered its fourth day.

After another night of Israeli air strikes, the death toll in Gaza jumped to 38 people, including 11 children, hospital officials said.

Israel expanded its targets to include several high-profile Hamas institutions, including Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh’s headquarters, a police compound, the Interior Ministry and the home of an Interior Ministry official.

Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, second from the right, and Egyptian Prime Minister Hesham Kandil, left, wave to the crowd as they meet in Gaza City. (Adel Hana / Associated Press)

GAZA CITY — Anyone hoping that Friday morning’s visit to Gaza City by Egyptian Prime Minister Hesham Kandil might ease the growing conflict between Israel and Hamas was sorely disappointed.

In a brief two-hour trip, Kandil made no public mention of a cease-fire or ending the violence that has so far killed 23 people on both sides.

Instead, he said Egypt’s loyalty rested squarely with Gaza’s people.

GAZA CITY — Palestinian militants for the first time targeted the holy city of Jerusalem on Friday with rocket fire as Israel and the Islamist group Hamas inched closer to all-out war.

It marked the first time in 21 years that air raid sirens rang in Jerusalem, a crowded ancient city that had long been thought to be off-limits since it includes many Arab residents and some of the world’s most sacred holy sites to Muslims and Jews.

GAZA CITY — A restless night punctuated by more than 250 Israeli airstrikes substantially darkened the mood and spirits of many Gazans on Friday as the conflict here entered its third day.

For the family of engineering student Amir Osama Maqousy, 18, the turning point came about 6:30 a.m., when the windows of his Gaza City house were blown in by a blast next door. Israeli airstrikes hit a squad of militants who were launching rockets into Israel, he said.

While Israel launched its surprise attack Wednesday on Gaza, it declared it to the world on Twitter, arguing its case for the new campaign against Hamas in less than 140 characters.

Minute by minute, the Israel Defense Forces fed followers information and arguments on the strike. At their computers, Internet users could click through aerial photos, check updates on the offensive and watch a YouTube video of the strike killing the Hamas military chief.

Flames erupt from a building after an Israeli strike in the center of Gaza City on Thursday. (Mohammed Saber / European Pressphoto Agency)

GAZA CITY — Israel made good on its threat to give Hamas leaders in Gaza Strip a rough night, pounding the territory with near-constant airstrikes.

Israel said Friday morning that it launched more than 150 strikes overnight against Hamas’ mid-range rocket launching posts and weapons depots, including a facility in Khan Yunis that exploded after being struck. Other targets included a power generator near the home of Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, according one Israeli report.

GAZA CITY — The rapidly escalating conflict between Israel and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip was defined on its second day by images of its most helpless victims.

In Israel, a bloodied infant in a pink jumpsuit was gingerly rescued from the rubble of an apartment building where three other residents were killed by a rocket fired from Gaza. The three deaths in Kiryat Malachi were the first on the Israeli side.

At about the same time, bereaved young parents to the south in Gaza City buried their cheerful 11-month-old boy, who had just learned to say “Mama.”

CAIRO — Egypt asked the United States on Thursday to immediately intervene to stop the Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip, warning that the violence could spiral “out of control,” the Foreign Ministry said Thursday.

Egypt also announced that its prime minister would travel to Gaza on Friday, an additional sign that the country’s Islamist-led government is under pressure from across the region to help find an end to the conflict.

The parents of 11-month-old Omar Masharawi, killed in an Israeli airstrike, hold his body during his funeral in Gaza City on Thursday. (Adel Hana / Associated Press )

GAZA CITY - Ahlam Masharawi, a mother of two, knew the Israeli shelling was close to her home by the way it rattled the thin corrugated metal ceiling.

She grabbed her 4-year-old son and bolted toward the front part of house, where a cement roof offered better protection.

A split second behind were her brother-in-law and sister-in-law, bringing Masharawi’s 11-month-old son, Omar, a cheerful baby who was just learning his first words.

An Israeli soldier throws a bloodstained table from an apartment building hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip on Thursday. The attack killed three people in the southern Israel town of Kiryat Malachi. (Tsafrir Abayov / Associated Press)

JERUSALEM — Nonstop barrages of rocket and mortar fire from the Gaza Strip killed three Israelis on Thursday as their nation’s forces continued to target militants in the coastal area for the second day.

Since Israel launched Operation Pillar of Defense to suppress rocket fire from the coastal strip, 220 more projectiles have been fired from Gaza into Israel. On Thursday morning, one hit a residential building in the town of Kiryat Malachi, tearing through two adjacent apartments on the fourth floor, killing a couple in one unit and a young woman in the other.

Palestinians in Gaza City gather around the wreckage of a car that was carrying Ahmed Jabari, head of the military wing of the Hamas militant group. He and three others were killed in an Israeli airstrike. (Adel Hana / Associated Press)

JERUSALEM — Israel’s surprise air assault on Gaza Strip militants killed the top military commander of Hamas and set the rivals on a familiar course that could end with another major confrontation — but in unpredictable new circumstances created by the “Arab Spring.”

Compared with its past campaigns against Hamas, Israel is likely to find itself more restrained politically and militarily in the new landscape.

SANA, Yemen — The Israeli killing of Hamas’ military chief Ahmed Jabari in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday came amid a much-altered political landscape in the Arab world, especially in Islamist-led Egypt looking to regain its regional prominence.

JERUSALEM — Retaliating for a recent barrage of rockets fired by Gaza Strip fighters, Israel on Wednesday killed a senior Hamas military commander as he traveled by car through Gaza City, the militant group said.

Ahmed Jabari, the 52-year-old head of the Hamas military wing, and three other people in the vehicle were killed in the airstrike. Shortly after, Israeli forces also struck other targets in the seaside enclave.

The attack marked the launch of a new Israeli military assault, dubbed Operation Pillar of Defense, aimed at “defending the people of Israel who have been under rocket attack and crippling terrorist organizations’ capabilities,” said Israel Defense Forces spokesman Lt. Col. Avital Leibovitz.