GAZA CITY: The death toll from Israel’s week-long campaign in Gaza rose to 194 on Tuesday, as two Palestinians were killed in renewed strikes after an Egyptian truce bid failed.

The week-old conflict seemed to be at a turning point, with Hamas defying Arab and Western calls to ceasefire and Israel threatening to step up a week-old offensive that could include an invasion of the densely populated enclave of 1.8 million.

Emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said a 24-year-old man was killed in Zeitun, east of Gaza City, on Tuesday evening.

Earlier, a 77-year-old man was killed in the southern city of Khan Yunis.

Hamas defies Arab and Western calls to ceasefire

They were the first people to be killed since Israel renewed its air strikes after observing for six hours a ceasefire that Hamas snubbed.

The Egyptian-proposed ceasefire went into effect at 9am, but Hamas said it had not been consulted on the truce and would not halt fire without a full-fledged agreement involving Israeli concessions.

Before the 9am deadline, three people were killed in two separate air strikes on Khan Yunis, and two other men in the city succumbed to injuries sustained in earlier raids, Qudra said.

Also in the south, a woman was killed in an earlier strike on Rafah.

Late Monday, the death toll rose above that of the previous major conflict between Israel and Hamas militants, an eight-day confrontation in November, 2012, which claimed the lives of 177 Palestinians and six Israelis.

So far, no Israelis have been killed in the week-long fighting in and around Gaza. Four people have been seriously wounded.

The Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights said on Sunday, when the toll stood at over 150, that three quarters of the dead were civilians.

And on Monday, a senior UN official said more than a quarter were children.

The bloodiest day so far was Saturday when 56 Gazans were killed.

Israel began Operation Protective Edge before dawn on Tuesday in an attempt to halt cross-border rocket fire by militant groups.

Since then, 922 rockets have hit Israel, while another 207 have been intercepted by its Iron Dome air defence system, the army said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose security cabinet voted 6-2 earlier on Tuesday to accept the truce, had cautioned that Israel would respond strongly if rockets continued to fly.

He said he expected the “full support from the responsible members of the international community” for any intensification of Israeli attacks in response to Hamas spurning a truce.

Earlier, Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza, said that demands the movement has made must be met before it lays down its weapons.

Other Palestinian militant groups — Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine — also said they had not yet agreed to the Egyptian offer.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who reached an agreement with Hamas in April that led to the formation of a unity government last month, called for acceptance of the proposal, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA said.

Abbas was due in Cairo on Wednesday for talks with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the Palestinian leader’s spokesman said.

The Arab League, at a meeting on Monday, also welcomed the ceasefire plan.

Ground assault

Israel had mobilised tens of thousands of troops for a threatened Gaza invasion if the rocket volleys persisted.

“We still have the possibility of going in, under cabinet authority, and putting an end to (the rockets),” Amos Gilad, a senior Israeli defence official, said.

Under the proposal announced by Egypt’s Foreign Ministry, high-level delegations from Israel and the Palestinian factions would hold separate talks in Cairo within 48 hours to consolidate the ceasefire with “confidence-building measures”.

Published in Dawn, July 16th, 2014