Negotiations between the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) and the Hamas to extend the 72-hour ceasefire have fallen apart. Over 50 Hamas missiles were fired towards Israel, and the IDF responded by targeting dozens of active Hamas sites in the Gaza Strip. This was the first exchange of attacks between Israel and Hamas since the truce ended on Friday.
IDF insiders have asserted that the 50 or so Hamas rockets were launched before the ceasefire was supposed to end on 8am, Friday. The retaliation by the Israeli forces resulted in 7 additional deaths of Palestinian civilians. Since the conflict first started in July 8th, almost 1,900 Palestinians were killed, with almost 1,300 of them being civilian. Two more Israeli soldiers were wounded after a mortar fire by Hamas forces.
Despite the high death toll of civilians in Gaza, the IDF told Sky News that they did not target civilian areas such as schools and hospitals. However, only two weeks ago a school run by the United Nations was struck by a rocket or a shell that could have been fired from an Israeli tank. An Israeli government spokesperson, Mark Regev had this to say:
"What we've had to do on a number of occasions is to hit terrorist targets in the immediate vicinity of hospitals and things like that, where they've abused them," Regev said. "And what you've seen is there's a whole series of reports coming out of Gaza from journalists across the planet - not Israeli journalists, Canadians, Finns, Indian journalists and others - who have all reported that Hamas has got this systematic pattern of behavior where they deliberately abuse humanitarian structures to shoot their rockets at Israel."
U.N. Secreatary-General Ki-moon Ban expressed great disappointment that Israel and Hamas failed to find a diplomatic solution to the problem and had to resort to even more violence. However, another Israeli official stated that Israel will not be negotiating with Hamas again until the militants stop unleashing rockets upon Israeli territory and civilians. Sami Abu Zuhri, a representative from Hamas stated on the other hand, that Israel had rejected all of Palestinian's demands.
Meanwhile the IDF announced that they withdrew most of its ground forces, saying that enough damage was dealt to their threat. In addition, the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives have voted to provide 225-million dollars-worth of support for Israel's Iron Dome, their missile defense system.
