The Washington Post.
TEL AVIV — The United States, increasingly worried about the regional
effects of protracted warfare between Israel and Palestinian militants
in the Gaza Strip, intensified efforts Tuesday to resolve the week-old
crisis, dispatching Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to the
Middle East for talks with Israeli and Arab leaders.
Cutting short a trip to Southeast Asia, where she was
accompanying President Obama on a three-nation tour, Clinton undertook
the mediating effort in an apparent attempt to head off an Israeli
ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, a step that would mark a major
escalation of the conflict and further complicate U.S. relations with
regional partners — notably Egypt, an emerging Arab Spring democracy,
and Turkey, a key NATO ally.
The trip comes amid continuing
violence on both sides, with Israel pounding the strip with airstrikes
and Gaza militants of the ruling Hamas organization launching rockets
into Israel.
The death toll from Israel’s military operation
stood at 113 on Tuesday morning, according to Gaza health officials, and
three Israelis died in a rocket attack last week. Israeli aircraft on
Tuesday struck dozens of targets, including the Islamic National Bank,
which Hamas set up to fund operations in Gaza in the face of
international sanctions.
A backdrop of upheaval across the Middle
East has only added to the tension, with the internal struggle in Syria
and Israel’s threats against Iran over its nuclear program creating
uncertainty on multiple fronts.
