Will Israel Order a Ground Invasion in Gaza?
A rise in civilian casualties brings pressure on Israel to end the operation in Gaza. But will Netanyahu order troops to charge? Sarah A. Topol and Dan Ephron report.
In the worst of the violence, 11 members of the extended Dalu family were killed Sunday afternoon when their home in Gaza City was leveled by an Israeli missile. The dead included a mother and her four children, all under the age of 10.
Israel said it was targeting the children’s father, Mohammed Dalu, describing him as a senior Hamas figure who has overseen rocket attacks on the Jewish state—the kind that prompted Israel’s assault on Gaza in the first place. There were conflicting reports whether he was killed in the attack on the multistory home or managed to escape.
Two people in a neighboring home were also killed.
A Palestinian woman is helped after being injured during a strike by Israeli forces in Gaza City on Monday. (Bernat Armangue / AP Photo)
The attack turned the city street, across from a popular Gaza restaurant, into something resembling a disaster zone, with neighbors raking through the rubble for survivors and rescue workers stabbing at the edges with a bulldozer.
“This war is supposed to get rid of the rockets, not the innocent children.”
“My whole family is gone,” said Ahmad Dalu, whose brother was the intended target.
“What have the women and the men done? They were trying to keep the children in a safe place from the shelling all around us. This war is supposed to get rid of the rockets, not the innocent children,” he told The Daily Beast.
At least three other airstrikes Sunday and early Monday targeted residential homes in what seemed to be a shift in tactics compared with the first days of the offensive, when Israel went after mainly weapons depots and individual militants. Ninety-one Palestinians have been killed in the fighting so far, including 24 children, 10 women, and 12 elderly people, according to Palestinian hospital figures.
The escalation and the specter of an Israeli ground assault on Gaza prompted President Obama to call on both sides to agree to a quick ceasefire. British Foreign Secretary William Hague warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he stood to lose international support if the killing continued.
“A ground invasion is much more difficult for the international community to sympathize with or support—including the United Kingdom,” Hague told reporters.
The offensive, precipitated by a surge in Palestinian rocket fire on Israel in recent weeks, has kept Palestinians mostly indoors. One exception today was the parking lot outside the morgue of Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, where about 100 people gathered waiting for the bodies of those killed in the last two days be dressed for burial—some leaning heavily on each other for support, unable to speak, while others were more defiant.
Ahmed Atallah felt the blast Sunday afternoon that killed his friend Mohammed Bakr, 32, in the Yarmouk area in the middle of Gaza City. Atallah lives three blocks away; his house shook with the impact. “It was a loud bang. Everything was shaking,” he recalled.
Bakr was a teacher who left behind four young children. “We are sad, but we don’t want to show the world our sadness,” Attalah said defiantly, as his friends and neighbors slapped him on the shoulder for support.
Ibrahim Mathoun, an old man in a white jalabeya, said he was waiting for the body of his cousin Sammi, a civilian security guard and father of three who was killed yesterday afternoon walking outside his home in the south of Gaza City. “We are happy because he is going to paradise and we are all defending our rights.”
The crush outside the squat single-story morgue was composed almost entirely of men. “We can’t bring our wives to the hospital. This is work for the men,” Mathoun said.
As he spoke, a body wrapped in white cloth with the green flag of Hamas was carried out of the entrance. Men flocked to the stretcher, hoisting their shoulders under the wooden frame and chanting “Allah akbar” as the body was loaded into a packed truck to be taken away from the hospital grounds.
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