Netanyahu orders Israeli military to prepare for 'significant expansion' of Gaza ground offensive

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the military Friday to prepare for a "significant expansion" of its ground operation against Gaza militants.
Netanyahu said the military's primary goal would be to destroy underground tunnels used by Hamas to attack the Jewish State. The announcement came hours after Israeli ground troops and tanks struck more than 100 terror targets in Israel's first major ground offensive in Gaza in just over five years.
The offensive follows an Egyptian effort earlier this week to halt hostilities. Israel accepted the terms, but Hamas refused, demanding that Israel and Egypt first give guarantees to ease the blockade on Gaza.
“Since there is no way to deal with the tunnels only from the air, our soldiers are doing it now from the ground," Netanyahu said at the opening of an emergency cabinet meeting in Tel Aviv, the Jerusalem Post reported. “We decided to launch the action after we tried all the other ways, and with an understanding that without this operation the price we will have to pay later would be much higher."
Tanks, infantry and engineering forces were operating inside the coastal strip. In a statement, the military said it targeted rocket launchers, tunnels and more than 100 other targets. Throughout the night, the thud of tank shells echoed across Gaza, often just a few seconds apart. Several explosions from Israeli missile strikes shook high-rise buildings in central Gaza City. Pillars of smoke could be seen from the Israeli side of the border.
At Gaza's main Shifa Hospital, casualties quickly began arriving, including several members of the same family wounded by shrapnel from tank shells. Among those hurt were a toddler and a boy of elementary school age, their bodies pocked by small bloody wounds.
At least 20 Palestinians have been killed in the early stage of the ground operation, including three teenage siblings and a 3-month-old boy who died after a shell hit his family's Bedouin tent in southern Gaza, The Associated Press reported, citing Gaza health officials.
The Israeli military said a number of soldiers were wounded throughout the night, and one soldier, Staff Sgt. Eitan Barak, 20, was killed in the fighting. The circumstances behind his death were not immediately clear. Hamas' military wing said it ambushed Israeli units in the northern town of Beit Lahiya and caused casualties but Israeli media said it was likely a case of friendly fire between Israeli troops.
"The ground offensive does not scare us and we pledge to drown the occupation army in Gaza mud," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said in a statement.
Israeli officials have said the goal is to weaken Hamas militarily and have not addressed the possibility of driving the Islamic militants from power.
However, Hamas has survived Israeli offensives in the past, including a major ground operation in January 2009 from which it emerged militarily weaker, but then recovered. Hamas has since assembled thousands of rockets and built a system of underground bunkers.
Israel had been reticent about launching a ground offensive for fear of endangering its own soldiers and drawing international condemnation over Palestinian civilian deaths.
Since the July 8 start of the air campaign, more than 260 Palestinians have been killed and more than 2,000 wounded, Palestinian health officials said. In Israel, one civilian died and several were wounded.
Israeli public opinion appears to strongly support the offensive after days of unrelenting rocket fire from Gaza and years of southern Israeli residents living under the threat. Gaza militants have fired more than 1,500 rockets at Israel over the past 11 days.
Israel said it launched an open-ended assault on several fronts, with the primary aim being to destroy underground tunnels into Israel built by Hamas that could be used to carry out attacks.
On Thursday, 13 heavily armed Hamas militants tried to sneak in through such a tunnel, but were stopped by an airstrike after they emerged some 820 feet inside Israel.
Israeli defense officials said soldiers faced little resistance during the first night of the ground operation, but the longer troops remain in Gaza, the greater the risk for heavy casualties on both sides.
Forces are expected to spend a day or two staking out positions and are working in the north, east and south of the Gaza Strip. Then, they are expected to move to the second phase, which is to destroy tunnels, an operation that could take up to two weeks.
Once Hamas is able to study the military's positions and movements, it may push back more forcefully, the officials said.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the military's strategy.
"The mission is progressing well," said Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, Israel's military chief. "There were a number of incidents overnight that we overcame and moved forward."
Prior to the Israeli Cabinet meeting, several ministers said they expected a prolonged offensive.
"This operation must be completed to its end and that includes a significant incursion into Gaza," said Uri Ariel, a Cabinet minister from the hardline Jewish Home party.
"We need to go in and finish the job. We need to eliminate every terrorist. They have no immunity."

Smoking gun? Intercepted calls point finger at Russian separatists in jet downing

Intercepted phone calls purportedly between Russian military intelligence officers and members of a pro-Russian separatist group that appear to capture the moment the rebels realized the plane they shot down was a civilian passenger plane could be the smoking gun that helps prove Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was downed Ukraine by the insurgents.
The tapes were released by SBU, Ukraine's security agency, and transcript was published in the Kiev Post. It appears to capture the chaotic moments after the plane was shot down — and the realization that it was a passenger plane rather than a Ukrainian transport plane, which had been targeted in recent days by the Russia-backed separatists.
"We have just shot down a plane," says a man the SBU identified as Igor Bezler, a Russian military intelligence officer and leading commander of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic. 
That call came just 20 minutes after the crash and was placed to a person identified by Ukraine’s SBU as a colonel in the main intelligence department of the general headquarters of the armed forces of the Russian Federation Vasili Geranin, according to Ukraine security officials.
But in a second tape released by the agency, two men identified as "The Greek" and "Major" discuss the debris field and the fact the the plane was a civilian aircraft.

"We have just shot down a plane."- Igor Bezler, Russian military intelligence officer and leading commander of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic

“It’s 100 percent a passenger [civilian] aircraft,” Major is recorded as saying, as he admitted to seeing no weapons on site. “Absolutely nothing. Civilian items, medicinal stuff, towels, toilet paper.”
The Boeing 777 was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it was shot down by what U.S. intelligence sources confirm was a surface-to-air missile near the village of Chornukhine, Luhansk Oblast, some 30 miles inside the the border with Russia.
The second conversation, if verified as authentic, could dispel Russian separatist claims that it was the Ukrainian military that shot the plane down. According to the transpcript:
Major: "These are Chernukhin folks who shot down the plane. From the Chernukhin check point. Those cossacks who are based in Chernukhino."
Grek: "Yes, Major."
Major: "The plane fell apart in the air. In the area of Petropavlovskaya mine. The first '200' [code word for dead person]. We have found the first '200.' A Civilian."
Greek: "Well, what do you have there?"
Major: "In short, it was 100 percent a passenger [civilian] aircraft."
Greek: "Are many people there?"
Major: "Holy [expletive]! The debris fell right into the yards [of homes]."
In a third intercepted conversation released by the SBU — which the agency says took place about 40 minutes after insurgents seemed to realize they had shot down a civilian plane — Cossack commander Nikolay Kozitsin tells an unidentified separatist that the fact the Malaysia Airlines plane was flying over the combat zone likely meant it was carrying spies.
"That means they were carrying spies," Kozitsin allegedly says. "They shouldn’t be [expletive] flying. There is a war going on."
On Friday, emergency workers combed the sunflower fields and villages of eastern Ukraine, searching the wreckage of the jetliner. The attack on Thursday afternoon killed 298 people from nearly a dozen nations, including vacationers, students and a large contingent of scientists heading to an AIDS conference.

U.S. intelligence authorities said a surface-to-air missile brought down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 as it flew from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, but could not say who fired it. The Ukraine government in Kiev, the separatist pro-Russia rebels they are fighting in the east and the Russia government that Ukraine accuses of supporting the rebels all deny shooting the passenger plane down. Moscow also denies backing the rebels.

By midday, at least 181 bodies had been located, emergency workers said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin blamed Ukraine for the downing, saying it was responsible for the unrest in its Russian-speaking eastern regions — but did not accuse Ukraine of shooting the plane down and did not address the key question of whether Russia gave the rebels such a powerful missile.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk described the downing as an "international crime" whose perpetrators would have to be punished in an international tribunal.

Spending (Cartoon)

Israel says Hamas fires three mortars during humanitarian cease-fire window

Israel's military said Hamas had fired three mortars into southern Israel from the Gaza Strip during a five-hour humanitarian cease-fire window Thursday.
The Israeli Defense Forces tweeted that the mortars hit the community of Eshkol. There was no immediate word of any injuries or damage. Israeli police spokesman Mickey Rosenfield had earlier told the Associated Press that two rockets fell in open areas in southern Israel, causing no damage or injuries. Rosenfield said the rockets landed at 12 p.m. local time (5 a.m. Eastern Time), two hours after the cease-fire began.
It was not immediately clear whether the Israeli military would respond. 
Shortly before the cease-fire took effect, Israel said it had thwarted an attempted attack by 13 Islamic militants. Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner told The Associated Press that the would-be attackers attempted to sneak into Israel through a tunnel. They were spotted at the tunnel's opening approximately 820 feet inside Israel, near a kibbutz, and were struck by Israeli aircraft. Lerner said the military believed at least one militant was killed in the strike and that the remaining fighters appeared to have returned to Gaza through the tunnel.
Lerner said the attack "could have had devastating consequences" and said the militants were armed with "extensive weapons," including rocket-propelled grenades.
The attack was preceded by a volley of 15 rockets fired from Gaza into central Israel. The Times of Israel reported that IDF spokesman Brig. Gen. Moti Almoz told Israeli television Channel 2 that the rockets were meant to be "an envelope for this attack."
"We knew this would come," Almoz said. "We knew specifically about this tunnel. We knew Hamas would try [to launch a terror attack] in any way it can."
Neither Hamas nor other Palestinian militant groups immediately claimed the attack. Lerner said that the incursion had not affected Israel's plan to support the truce. However, Almoz told The Times of Israel that the Israeli Defense Forces would not hesitate to launch new attacks to prevent rocket fire by Hamas, adding that the five-hour period was a "humanitarian window" to help "the population trapped in Gaza under a regime that uses it as hostages."
In the lead-up to the start of the temporary cease-fire at 10 a.m. local time (3 a.m. Eastern Time), Israeli aircraft struck 37 targets in Gaza early Thursday, including homes of two Hamas leaders, Fathi Hamad and Khalil al-Haya, according to the military.
The cease-fire had been requested by the United Nations so that emergency supplies, including food and water could be delivered into Gaza. 
The cross-border fighting has so far killed more than 220 Palestinians and an Israeli, according to Israeli and Palestinian officials.
Egypt has meanwhile resumed efforts to broker a longer-term truce after its initial plan was rejected by Hamas earlier in the week. Hamas, which seized Gaza seven years ago, wants international guarantees that the territory's blockade by Israel and Egypt will be eased significantly and that Israel will release Palestinian prisoners.
An Egyptian newspaper reporting on the cease-fire negotiations claimed that Israel had refused to consider a Hamas demand that Gaza residents be allowed access to the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, considered Islam's third-holiest site. Another reported sticking point was Hamas' demand for the release of six prisoners initially freed by Israel as part of an exchange for a captured IDF soldier, but later re-arrested in the West Bank.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Endless wave of illegal immigrants floods Rio Grande valley

EXCLUSIVE: McALLEN, Texas — Life jackets of all sizes and the occasional punctured raft are strewn along the banks of the Rio Grande, just south of Mission, Texas, where a relentless onslaught of illegal immigrants eagerly surrender to beleaguered Border Patrol agents around the clock.
It’s a cycle for which there is no end in sight.
“You're going to be out here a long time,” Fernando, an El Salvadoran child, told FoxNews.com shortly after surrendering to Border Patrol authorities after midnight Saturday. “There are thousands of us."
With most of the men and women charged with securing the Mexican border busy processing some of the 60,000 illegal immigrants who have made the harrowing - and sometimes deadly -journey to the American border in the past nine months, only a handful of Border Patrol agents drive the riverside loop in a small town called Granjeno just south of Mission, in the Rincon peninsula.

“You're going to be out here a long time. There are thousands of us."- Fernando, El Salvadoran child apprehended at the Mexican border

Illegal immigrants of all ages, including many unaccompanied children, run to them to surrender. They are piled into the back of Border Patrol vehicles and taken to a makeshift staging area in Rincon Village, where a large Border Patrol bus waits to transport them to McAllen’s Border Patrol facility.
FoxNews.com accompanied Texas lawmaker Louie Gohmert, a former judge and current Republican Congressman, to the site in the pre-dawn hours of Saturday. Gohmert, whose district lies some 550 miles northeast of what has become the most heavily-trafficked people-smuggling route in the world, has been to the location many times, but has never seen it so understaffed and overwhelmed.
“I’m more concerned than ever [that the border is] so seriously undermanned and I’ll be raising hell in Washington,” Gohmert, who invited FoxNews.com to see the situation first-hand, would later tell Border Patrol officials.
The Border Patrol agents loaded and unloaded their vehicles packed with the newly-arrived illegal immigrants — including women pregnant or nursing infants, and small, unaccompanied children — throughout the evening and early morning hours.  At first, they were mostly teenagers, ages 14 to 17, arriving with their mother or brothers or no one at all. Then came the pregnant women. A mother nursing her infant. A small girl with wide eyes clutching a doll.
A total of 72 came in during the first dark hours of Saturday morning.  A third were unaccompanied children.
The life jackets helped many make it across the Rio Grande from Reynosa, the Mexican city across the water from Mission, just west of McAllen. Sources say they come over on rafts ferried by the so-called “coyotes,” the human smugglers whose means of transport are rendered useless whenever discovered by the Border Patrol. Many don’t make it across the river; multiple sources became emotional when recounting their discoveries of small, lifeless bodies washed up along the riverbank.
Tens of thousands of illegal immigrants have flocked to the U.S. in recent months, believing the Dream Act, as well as a 2008 law that grants an asylum hearing to any child not from a border nation, and the White House policy known as “prosecutorial discretion” means once they arrive, they’ll never have to go back.
The Obama administration has said many will be returned to their homelands, but thousands have been dispersed around the country, sent to military bases or one of the nearly 100 Health and Human Services shelters run by private contractors or faith-based organizations. From there, they are typically turned over to a parent or relative already in the U.S. or released to a sponsor organization and given a court date for their hearing.
Many of the illegal immigrants tell Border Patrol and Texas state authorities they learned from the media in their home countries that if they crossed the border to the U.S. right now, they’d be given papers and allowed to stay, border sources who interview the immigrants told FoxNews.com.
The number of illegal immigrants apprehended at the border in the past nine months is more than double last year’s total. Most come from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, traveling up through Mexico to the border aboard an infamous train known as “The Beast.” From there, coyotes help them traverse the hardscrabble Rio Grande valley, and the serpentine river that winds through it. In May 5,366 illegal immigrants were detained in the Rio Grande Valley Sector. Last month, that number skyrocketed to 30,380, according to a law enforcement document obtained by FoxNews.com.
FoxNews.com witnessed the seemingly endless parade of illegal immigrants as they turned themselves in to agents and climbed into the vans. One mother teared up when telling FoxNews.com of her family’s perilous journey from Honduras. Some said the trip took as little as two days, others said they'd been traveling for months. In groups of 12 or more, they were then taken to the bus set up in a desolate area at the intersection of unlit dirt roads in Rincon Village along the river for initial processing under the full Texas summer moon.
“They just keep on coming,” one Border Patrol source said.
The same source noted that last week’s derailment of “The Beast” had temporarily stemmed the tide. Now that it’s up and running again, U.S. authorities here at the border are racing for even higher numbers.
Agents normally accustomed to working in the field waited at the bus, donning blue latex gloves as they examined the incoming illegal immigrants. They asked questions, searched belongings for contraband and tried to determine if the immigrants need medical help.
Most of the illegal immigrants appeared to be in clean clothes and good health — the biggest complaint FoxNews.com heard was from a child who had lost a shoe in transit. All looked very happy to have finally arrived on U.S. soil.
But appearances are deceiving, one border source said.
“Many of them have scabies, lice and sometimes serious infectious diseases that have not manifested themselves yet,” the source said.
From the staging area, the illegal immigrants were taken to the McAllen Border Patrol headquarters a short ride away. Though it is technically a processing center, the sheer size of the current influx has rendered it something more akin to a detention facility. By Saturday morning, it held 480 immigrants, about 100 more than their capacity. A few weeks ago, it held 1,200, Gohmert and Border Patrol sources told FoxNews.com.
A warehouse nearby with a 1,100 planned capacity was supposed to open its doors July 11, but a botched contract for air conditioners postponed the opening, according to a request for bids posted on the federal contracting website.
With the facility crammed beyond its capacity, the undocumented immigrants are being bused and flown to several other processing facilities along the 2,000-mile border, in El Paso and in California, where angry residents of Murrieta, a small city just north of San Diego, have turned away hundreds of illegal immigrants brought by the federal government for processing.
The veteran Border Patrol agents know that with their attention diverted to women and children, the border at times in locations such as along the Rincon Peninsula appeared virtually unprotected from dangerous drug and weapons traffickers with motives far less innocent than finding a better life. During the first 90 minutes FoxNews.com spent with Gohmert, no Border Patrol agent, Texas Department of Public Safety officer or any other member of law enforcement was visible.
We weren’t the only ones watching for them: a lookout perched atop a tall structure resembling a water tower located near the road quickly jumped off and ran toward the river after spotting our car coming down the dirt path. Border sources noted illegal immigrants typically run to cars to surrender; only those involved with cartels or gangs are likely to flee.
The cartels or coyotes or other criminal organizations have networks of people — often juveniles — paid to stand watch from points of high elevation on both sides of the border.
Early Saturday, whistles and signal calls echoed in the night air from across the river and in our midst, the clandestine communication of coyotes and cartel members using the border crisis to profit. As we moved, on foot or by car, through the thick brush toward the river or down the rocky path, we heard them all around us, moving with us, at some points frighteningly nearby.
When a Border Patrol official finally approached our group, he told Gohmert there were only three Border Patrol agents assigned to this large swath of border. They know it is a busy route, but they were so busy with processing the steady flow of children and families that the area appeared largely unpatrolled.
A recent law enforcement bulletin put the crisis in the Rio Grande Valley sector in the flat language of bureaucrats.
“Total apprehensions in the RGV Sector are at historically elevated levels, and include greater numbers of other-than-Mexicans and unaccompanied alien children than any other sector along the U.S. –Mexico border,” read the bulletin obtained by FoxNews.com. “Total apprehensions are now highest in the RGV Sector, which represents a noteworthy change from previous years.”
On the ground, border agents explain the situation in more conversational terms.
“There’s been a dramatic, serious uptick beginning in January,” one border source told FoxNews.com. "We've never seen this before — unaccompanied alien children and big groups of families.”
And in a twist, the cat-and-mouse game Border Patrol agents have played with illegal immigrants for decades has changed as their quarry no longer hides.
“We used to chase after them; now they are chasing us,” one official said.
Israel Cardoza and Kaye Cruz contributed to this report

Still in the Dark cartoon

Israel agrees to 5-hour cease-fire to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza

Israel agreed Wednesday to halt its airstrikes on Gaza for five hours in order to allow humanitarian aid, following a request from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.
The military said in a statement Wednesday that it would hold its fire for five hours starting at 10:00 a.m. local time on Thursday.
It warns however that it will retaliate "firmly and decisively" if Hamas or other militant groups launch attacks on Israel during that time.
The cease-fire request came from U.N. Special Coordinator for the Middle East Robert Serry, Haaretz reports.
There was no word on whether there would be a similar lull from Palestinian militants, who fired at least 90 rockets at Israel on Wednesday and vowed not to stop until their demands were met.
After news of the cease-fire broke, Israel’s “Iron Dome” missile defense system continued to intercept rockets heading toward Israel, the newspaper added.
Earlier in the day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the international community to condemn the militant group Hamas for committing a “double war crime” of firing barrages of rockets at Israelis while using Palestinians as human shields.
Netanyahu, speaking at a news conference, said "Israel will continue to do what it needs to do to defend itself until peace and quiet are restored,” according to the Jerusalem Post.
He added that the demilitarization of Gaza is "most important step for the international community to insist on."
The comments came as a senior Hamas official said the militant group has formally closed the door on the Egyptian proposal for a cease-fire aimed at ending the conflict with Israel.
Sami Abu Zuhri said Wednesday in a text message to The Associated Press that the group "informed Cairo today officially that we don't accept the proposal they made."
Israel had held out hope that the cease-fire deal plan could be salvaged. But Abu Zuhri says it has been definitively rejected.
Both sides once again exchanged a flurry of rockets Wednesday.
As of Wednesday afternoon, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said it had struck 50 Hamas targets in Beit Lahiya -- a town of approximately 70,000 people in northern Gaza -- the Zeitoun and Shijaiyah neighborhoods of Gaza City and other parts of northern Gaza.
The website of the Gaza Interior Ministry said Israeli warplanes hit 30 houses, including those of senior Hamas leaders Mahmoud Zahar, Jamila Shanti, Fathi Hamas and Ismail Ashkar.
Zahar was a key figure in Hamas' violent takeover of Gaza in 2007, while the other three were members of the Palestinian parliament elected in 2006. Many Hamas leaders have gone into hiding since the beginning of the Israeli offensive.
Israeli warplanes also bombed a coastal road west of Gaza City, killing four Palestinian boys, who were cousins and ages 9 to 11, said Ashraf Al Kedra, a Palestinian doctor. Seven others -- adults and children -- were wounded in the strike, he said.
The boys' uncle, Abdel Kareem Baker, 41, raged at Israel after the attack.
"It's a cold blooded massacre," he said. "It's a shame who come they didn't identify them as kids with all of the advanced technology they claim they're using."
The Israeli military said it was looking into the incident.
In response, Hamas fired 74 rockets at Israel Wednesday, 29 of which were intercepted by the country’s “Iron Dome” missile defense system, according to the IDF’s Twitter account.
The IDF also reported that 100 of Hamas’ rockets have struck their own territory since fighting erupted on July 8.
Prior to the intensified strikes in Gaza, Israel warned thousands of Palestinians living in the area Wednesday to “evacuate immediately” or face danger.
An Israeli military spokeswoman told The Wall Street Journal that residents of Beit Lahiya and parts of Gaza City had been warned by telephone.
On Wednesday morning, hundreds of residents of Zeitoun and Shijaiyah were seen walking in the streets, carrying small bags with belongings.
Older children carried smaller ones, in their arms or on their backs. Some of the women and children cried, looking terrified.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that 100,000 automated calls had been made to Gaza residents, but that number was not confirmed by the military.
The warnings were also delivered by text message and by leaflets dropped from planes. The Israeli military said in its message that large numbers of rockets were launched from these areas and that Israel plans to bomb these locations.
"Whoever disregards these instructions and fails to evacuate immediately, endangers their own lives, as well as those of their families," the message said.
Gaza residents told The Wall Street Journal that most of Beit Lahiya had already emptied out even before the latest warnings. But many residents in other parts of northern Gaza have decided to stay.
The Wafa Rehabilitation Center in Shijaiyah, which cares for 15 disabled and elderly patients, received several calls demanding the patients evacuate, director Basman Ashi told the AP. He said a shell fired by Israel hit near the building, causing damage to the second floor, but no injuries. Ashi added that he wouldn't evacuate his elderly patients, claiming they had nowhere to go.
An Israeli military spokesman told the Associated Press that the hospital's residents "have been asked repeatedly to leave."
"There is a rocket launching site in the area," the spokesman said, adding that Gaza militants are using the center to hide "behind civilians."
Four foreign volunteers -- from England, the U.S., France and Sweden -- have set up camp at the rehabilitation center to deter the military from targeting it.
English volunteer Rina Andolini, 32, said the patients range in age from 12 to over 70, and none can walk or move without assistance. She said there are also 17 Palestinian staff members.
Andolini said the patients are living in a constant state of fear, intensified by the Israeli tank shelling from across the border.
The Palestinian death toll in nine days of fighting rose to 204, with some 1,450 wounded, Palestinian health officials said.
However, it is not clear how many of the dead are civilians and how many are Hamas militants.
On the Israeli side, one man was killed and several people were wounded since the fighting erupted on July 8.
Hamas had come under pressure from the international community to reverse its initial rejection of the Egyptian cease-fire proposal, which would have gone into effect Tuesday morning had both sides agreed. Instead, Hamas announced its rejection of the proposal moments after Israel announced that its Security Cabinet had accepted it.
"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 operate a cease-fire," U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Tuesday.
"I hope the Hamas leadership now understand the best thing to do is to call a halt, have the negotiation, discussion, and sit down with everybody to work out a long-term, viable plan for Gaza," former British Prime Minister and Middle East peace envoy Tony Blair told Sky News.

Fed-backed group drops plan to buy fancy hotel to house illegals

Bailey: Just the beginning of the end of America.

A plan to house hundreds of illegal immigrant children at a multimillion-dollar hotel complex in Texas was scuttled after the prospect of taxpayers footing the bill for luxury lodging proved too much of a public relations obstacle.
BCFS, previously known as Baptist Child and Family Services, which has a contract with the Department of Health and Human Services to run camps at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio and Fort Sill in Oklahoma, had a deal to buy the Palm Aire Hotel in Weslaco, Texas, for $3.8 million. The hotel was built in the 1980s and includes three swimming pools, tennis courts and an exercise room.

The Palm Aire Hotel is not exactly Club Med but the 7-acre site features three swimming pools, lighted tennis courts, concierge service and a Jacuzzi.

"This proposal sought to find a solution for providing safe, humane care for the children flooding across the border and overwhelming U.S. Border Patrol and communities," BCSF said in a statement announcing the deal was scrapped. "BCFS is thankful to the City of Weslaco for their consideration and support, and is disappointed that misinformation has fueled so much negativity against this effort that its success is likely jeopardized."
Officials said the project never reached the point of submitting a proposal to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, but one of the hotel's current owners confirmed that a sales agreement with BCSF had been in place.
The deal died Wednesday afternoon, hours after FoxNews.com reported that as many as 600 children between the ages of 12-17 could be placed at the Palm Aire, where BCFS would also provide medical and mental health care and educational and recreational programs under a contract that sources said could total as much as $50 million.
The Palm Aire Hotel is not exactly Club Med -- but the 7-acre site features three swimming pools, lighted tennis courts, concierge service and a Jacuzzi. The property also has around 10,000 square feet of retail and meeting space.
Weslaco is part of the complex of communities that includes McAllen at Texas' extreme southern border, where tens of thousands of unaccompanied children from Central America have crossed over from Mexico, overwhelming Border patrol facilities. Federal agencies and non-governmental organizations have been scrambling for places to house the massive surge of illegal immigrants.
BCSF had planned to hire 650 workers – some making upward of $45 per hour - to staff the facility, according to sources.
Officials said the location made sense, even if it made for bad optics. 
"The facility also would have allowed for the quick transfer of children in Border Patrol custody in South Texas to a residential child care facility, and then expedited release to their families," BCFS officials said. "The average length of stay was expected to be 15 days. During that time, children would be provided room and board, in addition to basic education, recreational activities, medical and mental health care, case management, and religious services, if they chose to participate. The children would not have attended public school."
But images of the hotel's amenities generated a backlash that officials said could not be overcome.
"We are not going to continue with trying to purchase that hotel," a source close to the plan told Fox News. "It was just too controversial. We should have known better, no matter what the cost."