The military conflict in Gaza has continued into Wednesday following a six-hour respite in which Israel halted its aerial bombardment of the coastal enclave after accepting an Egyptian proposal for a ceasefire.
Hamas rejected the plan, continuing its rocket fire throughout the day and killing an Israeli citizen at the Erez border crossing, the first Israeli fatality of the conflict. The dead man was understood to be a civilian volunteer delivering food donations to soldiers in the area. An Israeli soldier was also lightly wounded.
Attacks in the early hours of Wednesday killed at least seven Palestinians, Gaza health officials said, and destroyed the house of Mahmoud Zahar – believed to be in hiding elsewhere – in the first apparent targeting of a top Hamas political leader.
The Israeli military said on Wednesday that it had sent out warning messages to residents in the northern Gaza Strip to evacuate their homes by 8am ahead of renewed attacks. The Palestinians' Gaza interior ministry told people not to heed the messages and dismissed them as psychological warfare
The first Israeli death added to growing pressure on the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, from hardline cabinet colleagues to escalate the offensive. On Tuesday the foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, advocated a "full takeover of the Gaza Strip" – effectively a re-occupation of territory evacuated by Israeli troops and settlers in 2005. "Israel must go all the way," he said. His deputy, Danny Ayalon, suggested Israeli soldiers were poised to invade Gaza.
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