ISRAEL turned its back on diplomatic efforts to secure a Gaza ceasefire yesterday, as it continued to pound the Palestinian territory from land, sea and air.
At least 20 Palestinian children were killed, raising the known death toll from the new Israeli ground invasion to more than 80. At least 70 of these have been civilians, fuelling international outrage.
Reports of the first direct clashes between Israeli troops and Hamas fighters in Gaza City emerged last night, as the battle intensified.
Meanwhile, aid agencies warned of a looming humanitarian crisis and described the situation as a "catastrophe".
On the tenth day of the Gaza campaign, Ehud Barak, Israel's defence minister, said the offensive would go on until Israel achieved "peace and tranquillity" for people in the south of the country.
George Bush, the US president, yesterday defended Israel's ground invasion of Gaza, saying it was justified in protecting itself against Hamas militants.
The US president-elect, Barack Obama, said he had been receiving daily briefings on the situation in the Middle East, but offered little comment beyond saying "delicate negotiations are taking place" and there could not be "two voices coming out of the United States".
Meanwhile, Hamas militants attacked southern Israel with more than two dozen rockets and promised to wait for Israeli soldiers "in every street and every alleyway".
After a week-long air offensive, Israeli ground troops invaded Gaza late on Saturday, and they have seized a main road, slicing the territory in half.
Israeli forces have also hit several mosques, which they claim were being used to store weapons, tunnels that they said had been used for smuggling and a number of houses. One belonged to a leading Hamas politician, who was not inside.
The Israeli army said "dozens" of militants had been killed or wounded. Its forces had already seized sparsely populated areas in northern Gaza and by yesterday morning were dug in on the edges of Gaza City.
In one of the first gun battles of the ground campaign, Israeli troops and Hamas militants clashed at close quarters on the outskirts of the crowded Gaza City district of Shajaiyeh, Israeli defence officials said.
Further movement into the heart of built-up areas would mean deadly urban warfare, with house-to-house fighting, sniper fire and booby traps in crowded streets and alleyways that are familiar to Hamas's 20,000 fighters.
United Nations and Gaza health officials have reported that more than 550 Palestinians have been killed and nearly 2,500 wounded since Israel started its campaign on 27 December. At least 200 civilians are dead.
Gaza's biggest hospital, Shifa, has been swamped by the bloodshed. Bodies were two to a drawer in the mortuary, and the wounded were being treated in hallways because beds were full. Yesterday, three pre-school-age boys killed in an artillery strike were laid out on a floor.
Most of the dead and wounded arriving at Shifa have been civilians, including 16 who died in attacks across Gaza yesterday.
Ten of them were children. Four died in a missile strike on a house east of Gaza City. Three died in the shelling of a Gaza City beach camp, and three toddlers were killed in an attack on a town outside the city.
Three adults died when a missile struck near a house of mourning in the northern town of Beit Lahiya, and three adults died in attacks elsewhere.
In Gaza City, home to 400,000 people, the streets were almost deserted yesterday.
The number of civilian casualties has risen since Israel launched its ground offensive, but Israel said Hamas was to blame as it operated in densely populated areas.
The violence has deepened the suffering in the impoverished Strip, which has a population of 1.4 million. The military said 80 lorryloads of humanitarian aid and fuel supplies would be let in yesterday.
Meanwhile, aid agencies warned that people in Gaza were rapidly running out of food, fuel and medicine because of the Israeli military's restrictions on emergency supplies.
Save the Children called the situation a "catastrophe" and Médecins Sans Frontières said surgical services had been "overwhelmed".
The Israeli military said it would allow lorries of humanitarian aid and fuel supplies into Gaza – but Oxfam warned this was "not enough at all".
Israel has three main demands: an end to Palestinian attacks, international supervision of any truce and a halt to Hamas rearming. Hamas wants an end to Israeli attacks and the opening of Gaza-Israel cargo crossings.
It was claimed yesterday that Israeli forces had been using white phosphorus shells, which can cause horrific burns. The shells provide cover to advancing ground troops by creating a smokescreen, shielding soldiers from fire. They can also illuminate large areas at night.
White phosphorus ignites on contact with oxygen. If it hits someone's body, it will burn until deprived of oxygen.
Under the Geneva Treaty of 1980, it is banned as a weapon of war in civilian areas because of the injuries it causes. But it can be used as a smokescreen.
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Graphic: The current situation in GazaDiplomatic drive goes on as bullets fly
Nicolas Sarkozy: Met Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak
INTENSIVE international diplomatic activity is under way in an attempt to secure a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
Separate missions to the Middle East are being led by Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, and a high-level EU delegation.
Yesterday Mr Sarkozy met the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik.
After the talks, Mr Sarkozy left for Israel and the Palestinian territories, where he will meet the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, foreign minister Tzipi Livni and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, who lost control of Gaza to Hamas in June 2007.
He is also due to visit Syria and Lebanon.
Earlier, the EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, and the foreign ministers of the Czech Republic, France and Sweden all met Mr Mubarak.
Egypt said that a UN Security Council resolution was urgently needed.
However, the US president, George Bush, in his first public reaction to Israel's ground invasion of Gaza, said yesterday that the Jewish state was justified in protecting itself against Hamas militants.
He said at the White House: "I understand Israel's desire to protect itself. The situation now taking place in Gaza was caused by Hamas.
"Instead of caring about the people of Gaza, Hamas decided to use Gaza to launch rockets to kill innocent Israelis."
Ms Livni, after meeting EU diplomats, rejected calls for an immediate truce.
Ms Livni, a leading candidate to become Israel's next prime minister in February, also said she saw no reason for an observation and monitoring force, one proposal made by European powers in their bid for a truce to end Israel's ten-day-old military offensive.
She pushed instead for teams that would help search out and seal off tunnels that could allow Hamas to re-arm.
"When Israel is being targeted, Israel is going to retaliate," she said.
Analysis: Even a truce between Israel and Hamas is unlikely to halt the forces of change sweeping the Middle EastEMAD BAZZI THE current war in Gaza threatens to escalate into a regional conflict which might redraw the political boundaries in the Middle East.
The danger of escalation stems from what is perceived to be, on the side of Arab and Muslim people the world over, a complicit stand on the part of the world governments, Arab leaders included, toward the suffering of the Palestinians. The fact that, to date, there has not been any condemnation of the atrocities against the civilian population of Gaza by western governments and the Arab leaders who follow them gives the impression to the majority of the people in the Muslim world that the notion of international law and humanitarian action is a form of deception and a principle of selective applicability.
There have been massive demonstrations in Arab and Muslim countries in the past two days – more than one million participants in both Morocco and Turkey – and countless other manifestations of frustration in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and North Africa.
If a stop is not negotiated to the conflict, there will be increasing pressure on Arab governments to take a stand and apply pressure on the West to do something, or else the demonstrations will escalate to a level which will threaten the security of these regimes.
The continuation of the conflict would also place decision-making about its resolution firmly in the hands of the Islamist forces in the Middle East, who command wide support in Arab countries and have their particular ideological convictions with regard to the future of the region.
Continuation of the atrocities against the Palestinians in Gaza would further exacerbate already tense relations between western countries and the Muslim world as it becomes apparent to Muslims that such atrocities are condoned by western governments.
From the Israeli side, Hamas is seen as posing a threat to Israelis because of its use of missiles against towns and cities where Israelis live. Also, it has not adhered to the terms of the agreement for a truce between the two sides. Hamas says the reason for not sticking with such agreement was that the Israeli army resumed the policy of assassination of its militants, carried on with the policy of settlement and appropriation of Palestinian land, and continued with the imposition of a blockade of Gaza. This created severe shortages of food, fuel and medical services, threatening the lives of many Palestinians.
Large numbers of civilians on the Palestinian side, including whole families, continue to be killed. Israel refuses to halt its military operations until Hamas is broken and its capability to launch missiles terminated.
Hamas and the Palestinian people in Gaza, having reason not to trust a settlement brokered by the US or European nations to disarm them, continue to fight, emboldened by the triumph of Hezbullah over the Israeli forces in Lebanon in 2006.
Whatever the outcome of this war, the political map of the Middle East, including, very importantly, which political faction among the Palestinians will command the support of the majority of the people, will not be the same once it is settled.
• Dr Emad Bazzi is a lecturer in Islamic Studies in the department of Arabic and Middle Eastern studies at the University of Leeds.
The full article contains 1731 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
