BOOM TOWN:A fireball erupts in Gaza City, and a crater is all that’s left of a Palestinian house (above) after yesterday’s Israeli airstrikes. (Reuters)
BOOM TOWN: A fireball erupts in Gaza City after yesterday’s Israeli airstrikes. (
)
The death toll passed 100 in the furious Israeli-Gaza border war yesterday amid reports a sweeping truce could be reached today.
At least 26 more people were reported killed on the war’s sixth day, including a top military commander of the Islamic Jihad terrorist group.
Israel reported being the target of 67 more rocket attacks from Gaza, including one that hit a vacant school in Ashkelon.
Meanwhile, Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s threat to order a ground invasion of Gaza was a bluff.
“If you wanted to launch it, you would have done it,” he said.
But Egypt, which is playing peacemaker in intensive negotiations, said a truce may be in the works.
“We are very close to a cease-fire,” a senior Egyptian official told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, adding that today is “critical.”
In public, both sides indicated they were far apart.
Hamas is demanding an end to the six-year Israeli blockade of Gaza, while Israel is insisting on a halt to the rocket attacks from Gaza — which have gone on for months — as well as an end to weapons smuggling into the heavily armed strip.
“We don’t accept Israeli conditions because it is the aggressor,” Mashaal told reporters in Egypt. “Whoever started the war must end it.”
He said Israel had asked for a truce — which officials in Jerusalem denied.
Israel’s inner Cabinet of nine key ministers held talks into today about whether to accept a ceasefire.
Earlier, four more rockets exploded in an open ground near the Israeli town of Beersheba.
An Israeli official said a diplomatic end to the war is the goal. “If we see it’s not going to bear fruit,” we can escalate,” he said.
Since the offensive started last week, 100 Palestinians and three Israelis have died in the cross-border conflict.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon arrived in Cairo last night as the negotiations intensified.
“Should things go as we plan, we are hours away from signing a comprehensive deal for a truce,” an Islamic Jihad official told the Arab news network Al Alam.
If the truce talks collapse, Netanyahu faces a difficult decision.
According to two polls reported yesterday, more than 80 percent of Israelis favored the launching of Operation Pillar of Defense last week, to end the terror attacks.
But when asked what to do now, 45 percent wanted to continue airstrikes, 22 percent sought a cease-fire and 25 percent wanted to launch a ground invasion, according to one survey.
Netanyahu’s government has authorized the call-up of 75,000 reservists.
During a diplomatic tour of Asia yesterday, President Obama called Netanyahu for an update after urging Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi to underscore “the necessity of Hamas ending rocket fire into Israel,” the White House said.