Israelis push deep into Gaza City
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ON THE ISRAEL-GAZA BORDER: Israeli troops commandeered high-rise buildings in three eastern districts of Gaza City on Monday, expelling residents and shooting Palestinian militants in the streets in the military's furious effort to destroy Hamas's fighting ability.
European diplomats, meanwhile, poured into the region seeking a cease-fire.
The 10th day of Israel's war on the Islamist rulers of Gaza also killed more Palestinian civilians, including about 12 children, pushing the total death toll to 550, and severely strained fuel and water supplies for hundreds of thousands of people.
Israeli planes destroyed what the air force said were dozens of smuggler tunnels in the south and Hamas fired about 25 rockets into Israel, one of which crashed into an empty kindergarten in the city of Ashdod, dolls and shrapnel littering its floor an hour later.
Leaders of Israel and Hamas spoke defiantly of victory. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni of Israel said after a meeting with officials from the Czech Republic, Sweden and France that Israel would "change the equation" in the region - meaning that it would not permit Hamas to shoot rockets into its cities.
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She added that in other conflicts, "Countries send in forces in order to battle terrorism, but we are not asking the world to take part in the battle and send their forces in - we are only asking them to allow us to carry it out until we reach a point in which we decide our goals have been reached for this point."
A leader of Hamas, Mahmoud Zahar, speaking from hiding in a recorded speech on Hamas television, said: "The Israeli enemy in its aggression has written its next chapter in the world which will have no place for them. They shelled everyone in Gaza. They shelled children and hospitals and mosques and in doing so they gave us legitimacy to strike them in the same way."
Israel said that it has hit such targets because they housed either rockets or launchers or militants, but it offered no evidence.
Northern Gaza was the sight of heavy fighting on Monday evening, including artillery, helicopter and tank fire, witnesses said. Plumes of smoke were visible in the night sky.
In Gaza City, where windows have been blown out, electricity has been cut and drinking water is scarce, residents' telephones rang repeatedly with recorded Israeli military messages saying, "We are getting rid of Hamas and we will use still other means to do so."
Leaflets dropped from airplanes said, "Hamas is getting a taste of the power of the Israeli military after more than a week and we have other methods that are still harsher to deal with Hamas. They will prove very painful. For your safety, please evacuate your neighborhood."
Palestinians said they had no place to go because so many neighborhoods received the same message.
Israel has long argued that Hamas exploits civilians by operating from among them. Hamas has responded that it is a people's movement.
Haitham Dababish, the emergency chief at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, said that seven members of the Abu Aeisha family were killed Monday when an Israeli naval shell hit their house in the Beach refugee camp in western Gaza City. The father, mother and five of their children were killed.
Other medical sources said that 13 members of the Samouni family were killed when a tank shelled their house in the Zeitoun neighborhood in eastern Gaza City.
In addition to Zeitoun, the neighborhoods where the Israeli military has been most active are Toufah and Shajaia. All are poor areas where Hamas has strong political support. Residents said the bodies of dead militants lay in the streets.
The army would not say whether the troops would go deeper into Gaza City, which presumably would lead to intense house-to-house fighting and heavy casualties on both sides.
Efforts at a diplomatic end were just at their initial stages as many governments called for a cease-fire. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France arrived in Israel on Monday after visiting Cairo and began talks with both Israeli and Palestinian officials in the West Bank.
Israeli officials said France had originally pushed for a 48-hour or 72-hour cease-fire by Israel, an attempt as they saw it to provide substantial humanitarian aide and to see if Hamas would stop its rocket fire for that period.
But the Israelis said the idea had little strategic merit since Hamas was unlikely to stop firing for that period and if it did, it was unclear what was supposed to happen afterward.
Politicians and intellectuals on Israel's left, many of whom supported the initial attack on Gaza as a means to send a message to Hamas regarding rocket fire, began calling for an end to the operation - to avoid the further movement of Israeli troops into Gaza and even more civilian suffering.
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