An Israeli civilian was killed by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, the military said, the first Israeli fatality in more than a week of fighting with Palestinian militants.
The Islamist group Hamas that rules Gaza claimed responsibility for launching the short-range rocket that struck an area along the border with Gaza.
Meanwhile, a Hamas leader said the Islamist group was still undecided on whether to accept an Egyptian proposal to end the conflict in Gaza.
Under the terms of the blueprint announced by Egypt - whose military-backed government has been at odds with Hamas - a mutual "de-escalation" of fighting was to begin at 9 a.m. (0600 GMT), with hostilities ceasing within 12 hours.
Rocket salvoes were fired at Israel after 9 a.m. and live television showed the Iron Dome anti-missile system intercepting several projectiles over the port city of Ashdod, where a factory was hit. Emergency services said no one was hurt.
Sirens sounded in other parts of southern Israel after what Channel Two television reported had been volleys of at least 10 rockets.
Israel said it had halted its attacks in the Gaza Strip but would respond strongly if Palestinian strikes persisted. Subsequently Israeli forces resumed attacks on Gaza after Palestinian rockets were fired, a military spokeswoman said.
Initially and at the Israeli military headquarters in Tel Aviv, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's security cabinet had approved the Egyptian offer, an official statement said.
Political sources said the vote in the forum was 6-2. Hamas's armed wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, rejected the reported text of the deal announced by Egypt, Gaza's neighbor, saying: "Our battle with the enemy continues and will increase in ferocity and intensity."
But Moussa Abu Marzouk, a top Hamas official who was in Cairo, said the movement had made no final decision. Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza, said earlier on Tuesday that the Islamist group had not received an official ceasefire proposal, and he repeated its position that demands it has made must be met before it lays down its weapons.
Amos Gilad, a senior Israeli defense official and envoy to Cairo, said Hamas had been weakened by the air and sea bombardment of Gaza that medical officials in the densely populated enclave said has killed at least 184 people, many of them civilians.
IRON DOME
Israel has found funding for three new Iron Dome rocket interception batteries, an Israeli official said on Tuesday, a week into its conflict with Palestinian militants in Gaza.
Israel had seven Iron Domes set up to shoot down missiles when cross-border fighting with Hamas-led militants surged on July 8, and has since brought two more into service, Israel's Defense Ministry said.
Speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, the Israeli official said that as a result of the Gaza crisis, three new Iron Dome units were now "in the pipeline". The Israeli official did not expand on where the money for the new rocket interceptors came from.
But Yair Ramati, head of the Defense Ministry's missile defense agency, told reporters at the weekend that all but one of the Iron Dome batteries in the field were paid for with U.S. grants.
The U.S. embassy in Israel did not immediately comment about the planned increase in the Iron Dome deployment on Tuesday. Before the Gaza crisis, Israeli officials had said they needed 13 Iron Domes to provide sufficient nationwide protection on the Palestinian front as well as volatile borders with Lebanon and the Egyptian Sinai.
But some predicted Israel would fall short of that number given deep defense budget cuts.
ROCKETS IN EILAT
In what may have been an effort to upstage Cairo's mediation, three rockets were launched from the Egyptian Sinai at the southern Israeli resort of Eilat, wounding four people, Israeli officials said.
They said the salvo was likely fired by Islamist fighters hostile to Israel and the Egyptian government.
REACTIONS
Israel sees in the Egyptian-proposed Gaza truce an opportunity to strip the Palestinian enclave of rockets but is prepared to redouble military action there if the cross-border launches persist, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday (July 15).
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who held a meeting with Netanyahu earlier in Tel Aviv, said Israel had the right to defend itself. "I came to Israel here today in order to send a very clear message.
The security of Israel is for us and especially for us Germans, of utmost importance. We want to state that Israel has under international law and from a political and a moral point of view, the right to protect its population from rocket attacks," he said.
Earlier, the Arab League said in a statement it welcomed the Egyptian initiative "to protect the lives of the innocent." In turn, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who reached an agreement with Hamas in April that led to the formation of a unity government last month, welcomed the proposal and urged its acceptance, official Palestinian news agency WAFA said.
US Secretary of State John Kerry condemned on Tuesday what he called the "brazen" firing of rockets by Hamas militants from the Gaza Strip. "I cannot condemn strongly enough the actions of Hamas in so brazenly firing rockets, in multiple numbers, in the face of a goodwill effort (to secure a ceasefire)," Kerry told a news conference in Vienna.
Meanwhile, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan accused Israel of "terrorizing the region" with its bombardment of Gaza and likened an Israeli politician to Hitler in a broadside likely to further strain fragile relations between the two countries.
"With utter disregard for international law, Israel continues to terrorize the region, and no country but us tells it to stop," Erdogan told members of his ruling AK Party at a speech in parliament on Tuesday.
Erdogan also criticized an Israeli member of parliament, apparently Ayelet Shaked of the ultra-nationalist Jewish Home party. "An Israeli woman said Palestinian mothers should be killed, too. And she's a member of the Israeli parliament. What is the difference between this mentality and Hitler's," he said.
Erdogan's remarks are likely to further complicate relations between the two countries, which reached a nadir in 2010, when Israeli commandos stormed the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara, which was part of an aid flotilla challenging the Jewish State's naval blockade of the Gaza Strip. Ten people were killed.
REUTERS
To watch Foutoun Raad's report, please click on the video above.
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