Ban Ki-moon due in Cairo to press Hamas to accept one-year ceasefire as rifts among Israel’s leadership deepen

The Palestinian death toll in the Gaza conflict climbed to more than 1,000 today after nearly three weeks of intensive Israeli bombing and ground fighting.

So
far 1,010 Palestinians have been killed, among them 315 children and 95
women, Dr Moawiya Hassanein, head of Gaza’s medical emergency services,
told the Guardian. The number of injured after 19 days of fighting
stood at 4,700, he said.

With Israeli troops fighting on the
outskirts of Gaza City after another night of heavy bombing and
shelling, the new death toll came as the secretary-general of the UN
was in Cairo for urgent talks to end the conflict.

Ban Ki-moon
said he wanted “an immediate end to violence in Gaza, and then to the
Israeli military offensive and a halt to rocket attacks by Hamas”.

“It
is intolerable that civilians bear the brunt of this conflict,” he
said, adding that the “negotiations need to be intensified to provide
arrangements and guarantees in order to sustain an endurable cease-fire
and calm.”

His demand followed a meeting with the Egyptian
president, Hosni Mubarak, The UN chief is also scheduled to travel to
Jordan, Israel, the West Bank, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria and Kuwait, although not Gaza itself.

There
was heavy fighting in northern Gaza and around the edges of Gaza City,
from where Israeli troops have mounted raids to within a mile of the
city centre. Early today, the old Gaza city hall, a former court
building, was destroyed in an air strike which damaged many shops in
the nearby market.

Israel’s military said it hit 60 sites
overnight, including the police headquarters in Gaza City that had been
hit on the first day of the operation, as well as rocket launching
sites, weapons stores and 35 smuggling tunnels under the border with Egypt. Six Israeli soldiers were injured.

Three
rockets fired from Lebanon landed in northern Israel in the second such
attack since Israeli forces launched their Gaza offensive. Police said
the rockets landed in open areas and there were no reports of damage or
injuries. People in northern Israel were advised to head to bomb
shelters. Reports from Lebanon said five rockets were fired but that
two fell short. Israel’s military responded with artillery fire towards
the firing sites.

Four rockets were fired on northern Israel last
Thursday. Hezbollah denied responsibility and speculation focused on
small Palestinian groups in Lebanon.

Rifts among Israel’s
leaders over the conflict are appearing to deepen. The defence
minister, Ehud Barak, is pressing for a one-week halt to the fighting
to allow in humanitarian aid, according to a report today in the
Ha’aretz newspaper. Barak believes the 19-day offensive has bolstered
Israel’s deterrent power and believes continuing the fight would bring
“only operational complications and casualties”, the paper said.

“Barak
is proposing the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] cease its fire, hold its
positions and keep the reservists under arms, and thus negotiate with
Egypt and the United States on an arrangement that would prevent arms
smuggling into the strip,” it said.

Barak fears that when Barack
Obama assumes the US presidency on Tuesday he will demand an immediate
Israeli ceasefire. Another risk was a tougher UN security council
resolution – a resolution last week calling for a ceasefire was ignored
as “unworkable” by Israel.

Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister,
favours ending the conflict, according to Israeli reports, although she
does not want any agreement with Hamas.

However, the prime
minister, Ehud Olmert, has made clear he would rather escalate the
conflict in the hope of more seriously damaging Hamas.

Israel’s
military believes only a few hundred Hamas militia have been killed and
that the movement still has many rockets ready to launch into southern
Israel. Of the 200 Palestinians detained by Israeli troops, fewer than
30 were found to have any link with militant groups in Gaza, a report
said.

Despite nearly three weeks of intense Israeli
bombing, Hamas fired 18 rockets into Israel on Tuesday – although that
is less than a third of the daily rockets at the start of the offensive.

As
well as the Palestinian death toll, 13 Israelis have been killed,
including three civilians. At least 35,000 Palestinians are holed up in
UN schools operating as emergency shelters. Tens of thousands more are
staying with relatives or friends.

Around two-thirds of the
territory’s 1.5m people have no electricity; the rest have only an
intermittent supply, according to the UN said.