Israel pummeled Gaza with air strikes on Tuesday despite intense U.S. and global diplomacy to stop the region’s fiercest hostilities in years.
U.S. President Joe Biden expressed his support for a ceasefire during a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday.
But Netanyahu told Israelis earlier that strikes against militant sites and leaders in Gaza would carry on.
He said in a televised speech that the directive was to continue to strike at terror targets after meeting with military and intelligence chiefs.
The Israeli military said late on Monday that Hamas and other Palestinian groups had fired about 3,350 rockets from Gaza – 200 of them on Monday alone – and that Israeli air and artillery strikes had killed at least 130 militants.
Gaza health officials put the Palestinian death toll at 212, including 61 children and 36 women, since hostilities began last week. Ten people have been killed in Israel, including two children.
Hamas began its rocket assault last Monday after weeks of tensions over a court case to evict several Palestinian families in East Jerusalem, and in retaliation for Israeli police clashes with Palestinians near the city’s al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third-holiest site, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
The hostilities between Israel and Hamas-controlled Gaza have been accompanied by an uptick of violence in the West Bank, where the Palestinians have limited self-rule.
There have also been clashes between Israel’s Jewish and Arab communities in mixed areas.
Israel’s president has warned that tension between Jewish and Arab Israelis could devolve into “civil war”.
General strikes are planned for Tuesday in Arab towns within Israel and Palestinian towns in the West Bank, with posts on social media urging solidarity “from the sea to the river.”
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