The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Fighting subsides in Gaza, but truce hopes look fragile
Israel questions whether Hamas serious over humanitarian truce

Gaza/Jerusalem, July 27
Fighting subsided in Gaza on Sunday after Hamas Islamist militants said they backed a 24-hour humanitarian truce, but there was no sign of any comprehensive deal to end their conflict with Israel.

Hamas said it had endorsed a call by the United Nations for a pause in the fighting in light of the upcoming Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, expected to start in the next couple of days.

Some firing had continued after the time that Hamas had announced it would put its guns aside and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu questioned the validity of the truce.

"Hamas doesn't even accept its own ceasefire, it's continuing to fire at us as we speak," he said in an interview with CNN, adding that Israel would "take whatever action is necessary to protect our people".

Nonetheless, Gaza Strip residents and Reuters witnesses said Israeli shelling and Hamas missile launches had slowly quietened down through the afternoon, suggesting a de-facto truce might be taking shape as an international efforts to broker a permanent ceasefire appeared to flounder.

However, Israel's military has said it will need more time to destroy a warren of tunnels that criss-cross the Gaza border that it says is one of its main objectives.

Israel and the Hamas Islamists who control Gaza had agreed to a 12-hour ceasefire on Saturday to allow Palestinians to stock up on supplies and retrieve bodies from under the rubble.

Netanyahu's cabinet voted to extend the truce until midnight on Sunday at the request of the United Nations, but called it off when Hamas launched rockets into Israel during the morning.

Palestinian medics said at least 10 peersons had died in the wave of subsequent strikes that swept Gaza, including a Christian woman, Jalila Faraj Ayyad, whose house in Gaza City was struck by an Israeli bomb.

Some 1,060 Palestinians, mainly civilians and including many children, have been killed in the 20-day conflict. Israel says 43 of its soldiers have died, along with three civilians killed by rocket and mortar fire out of the Mediterranean enclave. Israel launched its Gaza offensive on July 8, saying its aim was to halt rocket attacks by Hamas and its allies.

The army says its drive to find and eliminate tunnels would continue through any temporary truce.

Diplomatic efforts led by US Secretary of State John Kerry to end the 20-day conflict have shown little sign of progress.

Israel and Hamas have set conditions that appear irreconcilable. Hamas wants an end to the Israeli-Egyptian economic blockade of Gaza before agreeing to halt hostilities. Israel has signalled it could make concessions toward that end, but only if Gaza's militant groups are stripped of their weapons. — Reuters

Egyptian army destroys 13 more Gaza tunnels

Egypt's army said on Sunday that it has destroyed 13 more tunnels connecting the Sinai Peninsula to the Gaza Strip, taking to 1,639 the overall number it has destroyed.

Cairo has poured troops into the peninsula to counter a rising insurgency and its security operation involves the destruction of these tunnels.

The Palestinian militant group Hamas, which is the main power in Gaza, reportedly uses the tunnels to smuggle arms, food and money into the blockaded coastal enclave.

Fighting in Ukraine prevents crash site visit despite international deal

demanding justice for crash victims: Foreigners working and living in Ukraine carry flags of their countries during a rally in Kiev on Sunday. AFP

Donetsk, July 27
Fighting around the site of the Malaysian airliner downed in Ukraine prevented a visit by international experts on Sunday, although Malaysia said separatists had agreed to allow in international police and investigators.

Alexander Hug, deputy head for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's monitoring mission in Ukraine, told reporters: "We heard indications there's fighting going on." "The situation on the ground appears to be unsafe ... we therefore decided to deploy tomorrow morning," he said, flanked by Dutch and Australian experts.

The eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk are gripped by heavy fighting as Ukrainian government forces try to dislodge the pro-Russian separatists.

"Fighting in the area will most likely affect (the) crash site," Hug said.

The separatists remain in control of the site where Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down earlier this month and have restricted access to rescue teams and investigators.

Earlier, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said an agreement reached with separatist leader Aleksander Borodai would "provide protection for international crash investigators" to recover human remains and ascertain the cause of the crash.

The OSCE has provided a team to monitor the site in advance of an investigation.

"It is imperative that we deploy a full team of investigators to ensure all the human remains are removed from the site, identified and repatriated," Najib said in the statement issued by his office on Sunday.

"We also need a full deployment of investigators to have unfettered access to the crash site so we can understand precisely what happened to MH17. I hope that this agreement with Mr Borodai will ensure security on the ground, so the international investigators can conduct their work." He said "three grieving nations", referring to Malaysia, Australia and the Netherlands, had formed a police group to secure the site. — Reuters

US planning to help Ukraine with missiles

Washington, July 27
The Pentagon and American intelligence agencies are developing plans that would enable the US to provide specific locations of deadly surface-to-air missiles with pro-Russia rebels in eastern Ukraine that could be targeted and destroyed by the Ukrainian government, according to a media report.

Since the downing of Flight MH17 on July 17, the flow of heavy arms into eastern Ukraine has drastically increased, the Pentagon and the State Department said on Friday, citing American intelligence reports.

But the proposal to supply Ukraine with specific locations of surface-to-air missiles has not yet been debated in the White House, a senior administration official was quoted as saying by The New York Times.

"It is unclear whether President Obama, who has already approved limited intelligence sharing with Ukraine, will agree to give more precise information about potential military targets, a step that would involve the US more deeply in the conflict," the report said.

Already, the question of what kind of intelligence support to give the Ukrainian government has become part of a larger debate within the administration about how directly to confront President Vladimir Putin of Russia and how big a role Washington should take in trying to stop Russia's rapid delivery of powerful weapons to eastern Ukraine, it said.

The US is already sharing with the Ukrainians satellite photographs and other evidence of the movement of troops and equipment along the Ukrainian-Russian border. — PTI

Uncovering the Gaza tunnels

The Gaza Strip smuggling tunnels are passages that have been dug under the Philadelphi Corridor, a narrow strip of land, 14 km in length, situated along the border between Gaza Strip and Egypt
1979: After the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty, the town of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, was split by this corridor. One half of the town belongs to Egypt, and the other half is located in Gaza
2005: After Israel withdrew from Gaza, the corridor was placed under the control of the Palestine Authority until 2007. When the Hamas seized power in 2007, Egypt and Israel closed borders with Gaza
2009: Egypt began the construction of an underground barrier to block existing tunnels and make new ones harder to dig.
2013-2014: Egypt’s military has destroyed most of the 1,200 tunnels which were used to smuggle food, weapons and other goods into Gaza

An Israeli army officer in a Palestinian tunnel that runs from the Gaza Strip into Israel. Israel says its current military campaign is aimed at destroying the tunnels.

A Palestinian man moves a goat through a smuggling tunnel from Egypt to Gaza under the border at Rafah.

The entrance to a tunnel exposed by the Israeli military is seen on the Israeli side of the Israel-Gaza border.

The history

In a book, Gaza: A History, Jean-Pierre Filiu describes the "first historic reference to the loose subsoil of Gaza" during Alexander the Great's 332 BC siege

In more recent times, tunneling is said to have begun in the early 1980s when the border was reestablished after Israel withdrew from Sinai

Initially, the tunnels were used for moving consumer goods and drugs. During the First Intifada (December 1987 to 1993), they became conduits for weapons and militants

As Israel limits the Palestinian freedom of movement, for most Gazans the tunnels are the only way to move from and to Gaza

Measures taken by Israel

Israeli has destroyed hundreds of homes along the Gaza-Egypt border to enlarge buffer zone, asserting that they were used to hide smugglers' tunnels

The Israel Defence Forces maintain that this was done in order to prevent smuggling tunnels and other threats (i.e. from snipers) to its soldiers who are patrolling the border

Although Israeli air strikes rendered over 100 tunnels inoperative during the Gaza War (2012), many of them were restored within a few weeks because the main damage was sustained at the openings, not in the middle sections

Measures taken by Egypt

Some measures such as Egypt's construction of an underground fence along its side of the Gaza-Egypt border have been taken. In late 2009 Egypt started construction of a subterranean barrier in an attempt to curb the use of smuggling tunnels

In 2010, the Egyptian Mubarak regime sprayed toxic gas into the tunnels, killing four Palestinians. In 2011, Egypt began sealing a series of smugglers' tunnels between its border and the Gaza Strip