Gaza conflict: US says Israeli attack on UN school was 'totally unacceptable'
White
House's strongest and most explicit condemnation of Israel comes as
Palestinian leaders prepare for talks on short ceasefire
Gaza crisis: latest developments
House's strongest and most explicit condemnation of Israel comes as
Palestinian leaders prepare for talks on short ceasefire
Gaza crisis: latest developments
The UN school in Jabaliya hit by multiple shells earlier this week. Photograph: Sipa USA/REX
Israel
has come under heavy pressure from the US to curtail civilian deaths
after concluding that its forces were likely to have been behind the shelling of a UN school.
In what amounted to the strongest and most explicit condemnation of Israel since the Gaza
conflict began, President Barack Obama's press secretary on Thursday
called the attack "totally unacceptable" and "totally indefensible". He
also said the administration was urging Israel to do more to avoid
civilian deaths and said US officials were taking issue with "specific
military decisions" by Israel. "It is clear that we need our allies in
Israel to do more to live up to the high standards they have set
themselves."
The EU issued a similar statement.
US officials
had initially declined to apportion blame for the shelling, even though
the UN said all of the evidence pointed to Israel. On Thursday, after
Israel conceded it was operating in the area and said it was possible
that "stray Israeli fire" hit the school and killed 16 Palestinians, the
White House shifted its stance.
The angry words from Washington came as Palestinian leaders prepared to hold talks in Egypt
on Friday on a short ceasefire they hope will help end the three-week
Israeli offensive, which has now killed some 1,400 people in Gaza.
Prospects for success look deeply uncertain but Israel signalled that it
could stop fighting without any agreement.
Disagreements were
reported on Thursday over the composition of a Palestinian delegation
ahead of the negotiations in Cairo, with Hamas officials insisting that
there would be no truce until it was agreed to lift the seven-year
blockade of the coastal territory by Israel and Egypt.
But there
were also signs of possible readiness for a deal as Mahmoud al-Zahar, a
senior Hamas leader, declared: "The Palestinian people will be marking
their victory in the very near future." Khalil al-Haya, another Hamas
official, said that if Israel wanted a way out of the crisis it had to
accept Palestinian terms.
The team is likely to be headed by
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, along with other officials of
the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority. Islamic Jihad, another
militant Gaza faction, will also be represented.
Al Sharq
al-Awsat, a Saudi-owned paper, reported that the intention is to work
towards a three or five-day ceasefire to be followed by negotiations in
Cairo on a permanent agreement.
In Israel, attention focused on
military operations in Gaza, the funerals of the latest of the 56
soldiers who have been killed, and the rockets which continued to be
fired from the enclave despite Israeli claims that the Palestinian
arsenal had now been heavily depleted.
And there was an uncompromising message about the terms of any truce. Binyamin Netanyahu,
Israel's prime minister, said after a cabinet meeting that Israel would
continue destroying the "terror tunnels" crossing from Gaza into Israel
whether or not there was a ceasefire. "I will not accept any proposal
that does not allow the army to complete this important mission for the
people of Israel," Netanyahu said. It was the "first stage of the
demilitarisation" of Gaza – a demand he claimed was supported by the US
and EU.
Netanyahu's remarks came two days after Hamas released a video of fighters climbing out of a tunnel into Israel and attacking a base in a raid Israeli officials said claimed the lives of five soldiers.
Early on Thursday the army announced the call-up of another 16,000 reservists – despite calls for an immediate ceasefire.
Israeli
officials briefed that a truce would have to be based on a proposal put
forward by Egypt – suggesting that conditions proposed by Qatar and
Turkey, both supporters of Hamas, would not be acceptable. Two senior
Israeli security officials held consultations in Cairo on Wednesday,
underlining close coordination between the two countries, but no details
of their talks were released.
Israel Radio reported a senior army
officer as saying that a ceasefire should allow Israel continued access
to border areas of Gaza in order to allow it to destroy new tunnels dug
once this bout of fighting was over. Tunnelling by Hamas had been set
back five years, the unnamed officer claimed, adding that "scores" of
its fighters were buried in tunnels that had been destroyed.
Hamas's
tunnelling activities had gone on round the clock for months, he said.
Israeli media also reported residents in communities near the Gaza
border complaining that they had heard noises underground and reported
them to the army but that investigations had not uncovered anything
suspicious.
In New York, the UN security council was expected to
call again for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza after the furious
international condemnation of the attack on a UN school. Referring to
that incident, and to a later attack, the EU said in a statement: "It is
unacceptable that innocent displaced civilians, who were taking shelter
in designated UN areas after being called on by the Israeli military to
evacuate their homes, have been killed." The EU was "deeply concerned
at the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza" and called on all
sides to "immediately allow safe and full humanitarian access for the
urgent distribution of assistance".
Navi Pillay, the UN high
commissioner for human rights, said she believed Israel was deliberately
defying international law and that world powers should hold it
accountable for possible war crimes. "This is why again and again I say
we cannot allow impunity; we cannot allow this lack of accountability to
go on." Hamas had also violated international humanitarian law by
firing rockets indiscriminately into Israel, sometimes from
densely-populated areas, Pillay said.
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