Hamas claims to have Israeli soldier; diplomats seek truce in Gaza conflict

An Israeli soldier is missing following a bloody seven-hour battle Sunday in an East Gaza neighborhood, Israel’s military said Tuesday, but it was unknown yet whether the soldier was dead or alive. The development could complicate diplomatic efforts underway to stop the conflict between Israel and Hamas as it enters its third week.

Hamas announced Sunday that it had captured an Israeli soldier. Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations promptly denied the claim, but Israel’s military said it was investigating. The soldier was one of seven Israelis inside an armored personnel carrier in the Shijaiyah enclave when Hamas militants attacked with an antitank missile.

On Tuesday, Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, an Israeli army spokesman, said the military has not been able to identify the soldier’s remains from among those removed from the vehicle.

“We have positively identified six dead soldiers, and we still need to determine if the seventh soldier is missing,” Lerner said.

In the Sunday announcement on the Hamas-operated al-Aqsa television network, a masked spokesman for the militants’ military wing said a soldier named Shaul Alon is “a prisoner now.” Hamas did not show the soldier but displayed what the group said was Alon’s photo ID and serial number.

On Tuesday afternoon, Israel’s military said the missing soldier was a 21-year-old sergeant named Oron Shaul. Israeli news reports said that there was a slim possibility that he was still alive.

If Hamas has indeed captured the soldier, it would represent a major triumph for the militant Palestinian Islamist group. If alive, Hamas could use him as leverage for its political demands in truce negotiations with Israel, unfolding Tuesday in Cairo. Israelis have not forgotten Gilad Shalit, a soldier who was captured by Hamas in 2006 and held for more than five years until he was released in 2011 as part of a prisoner swap. If Shaul is dead, possessing his remains could also provide a bargaining chip for the militant group, as Israel would seek the return of his remains for burial.

In Cairo, Secretary of State John F. Kerry broadened the U.S. effort to reach a cease-fire in Gaza on Tuesday, seeking to revive a truce proposal rejected by Hamas militants a week ago.

As the conflict entered its 15th day, Israel continued to pound Hamas targets in Gaza with airstrikes and from naval vessels off the coast. The Health Ministry in Gaza reported that 583 people have been killed by Israeli bombardment and some 3,640 wounded since the start of the conflict.

Overnight, Israel’s military announced that two more Israeli soldiers had been killed on Monday, bringing the death toll to 27 since Israel launched its ground offensive five days ago. Two Israeli civilians have also been killed.

Hamas and other militant factions in Gaza continued to fire rockets at Israel. One projectile struck a house in Yehud in central Israel near the Ben-Gurion International Airport. One woman suffered light wounds from flying shrapnel.

The Israeli military officially declined a proposal by U.N. Special Envoy Robert Serry for a brief humanitarian cease-fire in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday. Serry sought a pause in fighting by both sides to allow ambulances to reach the wounded in areas under heavy bombardment and to let residents safely bury their dead, shop for supplies and to relocate away from areas being shelled.

As casualties mount for Israelis, Hamas fighting units are proving to be tenacious, trained and deadly. According to an account by Israeli military, members of Israel’s elite paratrooper unit engaged in a firefight with Gaza militants that left one paratrooper dead and several wounded. Hamas lost seven fighters in the exchange.

Israel said it has killed 183 militants in its ground operation over the last four days. It reported that 28 suspected militants were detained in the field and taken for interrogation.

More than 560 people in Gaza, many of them women and children, have been killed since Israel’s “Operation Protective Edge” began.

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said the Gaza military operation, which is now focused on finding and destroying underground tunnels, would continue “as long as necessary until the completion of the task and the return of the quiet in the whole of Israel.”

But the most senior Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip, Ismail Haniyeh, warned that “invaders” would find a graveyard awaiting them in Gaza. In a televised broadcast, Haniyeh said Hamas fighters would not put down their weapons until Israel and Egypt agree to open border crossings, ease travel and the flow of goods, and free Hamas members who were jailed after the killing of three Jewish teenagers in the West Bank last month.

“We’ll never go back to the slow death,” Haniyeh said. “Our demands are fair and they are humane. Our people have decided.”

The Israeli military said that at least four of its soldiers were killed in a firefight with Hamas militants who sneaked into Israel through a tunnel from northern Gaza. Ten Gaza militants died in the exchange, a military spokesman said, and another underground infiltration attempt by Hamas was repelled by an Israeli airstrike.

On Sunday, 13 Israeli troops were killed in combat in the east Gaza neighborhood of Shijaiyah. It was the bloodiest day of the conflict.

With violence and the death toll rising, and as Israeli troops moved from the margins to the population centers in Gaza, diplomatic efforts to secure a truce intensified.

At the White House, President Obama said, “We don’t want to see any more civilians killed.” He instructed Secretary of State John F. Kerry to seek “an immediate cease-fire” between Hamas and Israel. Kerry arrived in Cairo on Monday night.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas met Monday with his political rival, Hamas leader Khaled Meshal, in Qatar. According to aides traveling with Abbas, the Palestinian leader from Ramallah in the West Bank is looking for a cease-fire brokered by Egypt based on a return to the November 2012 agreement between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

“Everyone is supporting the Egyptian initiative for a cease-fire — the Palestinian Authority, the Arab League, the Americans, Israel,” said Tzipi Livni, Israel’s justice minister and the country’s top peace negotiator.

Livni said the only opponent to a truce was Hamas leader Meshal, who, she said, “is not even living in Gaza and who has a good life in a nice hotel somewhere but wants to continue putting his people under stress.”

But any mediation effort could run into an obstacle. If Israel agrees to a cease-fire, it would have to abandon its core objective in Gaza of destroying Hamas tunnel networks. But Israeli military officials say that they believe the tunnels are more extensive than previously thought and that it will take more time to demolish them, raising a dilemma.

“We have a mission, and we are going to fulfill it. Israel is not going to leave the threats of tunnels beneath the border between Gaza Strip and Israel,” a senior Israeli military official told reporters Sunday, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of military guidelines. But he also acknowledged that with the growing casualties on both sides, “it’s the right time for all sides to stop.”

The number of Palestinians seeking refuge with the United Nations continues to rise, growing to at least 85,000 people now living in 67 shelters, mostly at schools, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency said Monday. U.N. agencies report that more than 100,000 Gazans have been displaced from their homes.

The United Nations also said a preliminary review in Gaza found that more than 72 percent of those killed were civilians, not militants, and include large numbers of women and children. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said the high numbers of children and noncombatants raise “concern about respect for the principle of distinction and proportionality under international humanitarian law.”

Two of the Israeli soldiers killed were American citizens who had come to Israel, like many Jewish Americans, to volunteer in Israel’s army. One, Max Steinberg, was from Woodland Hills, Calif., while the other, Nissim Sean Carmeli, was from South Padre Island, Tex., Israel’s military said.

The State Department recommended Monday that U.S. citizens consider deferring non­essential travel to Israel and the West Bank, a possible economic blow to both during the peak summer tourist season.