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Gaza campaign on pace to become deadliest Israeli conflict in recent years

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<span class="pb-caption" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Editor’s Note: This video contains graphic content. Death toll passes 1,000 as the 12-hour truce allows Gazans to come home only to find more dead. Meanwhile, world leaders gather in Paris to push for an extension of the cease-fire. (Reuters)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span class="pb-byline" style="display: inline-block; padding-right: 5px;">By <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/pb/sudarsan-raghavan/" style="text-decoration: none;">Sudarsan Raghavan</a>, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/pb/anne-gearan" style="text-decoration: none;">Anne Gearan</a> and Ruth Eglash</span> <span class="pb-timestamp" style="display: inline-block; padding-right: 5px;">July 27 at 1:49 AM</span> <span class="pb-tool email" style="display: inline-block; padding-right: 5px;"><a href="mailto:raghavans@washpost.com;anne.gearan@washpost.com;Ruth.Eglash@washpost.com?subject=Reader%20feedback%20for%20'Gaza%20campaign%20on%20pace%20to%20become%20deadliest%20Israeli%20conflict%20in%20recent%20years'" style="text-decoration: none;"><span class="fa fa-envelope" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; display: inline-block;"></span></a></span> <span class="tweet-authors"><span class="pb-twitter-follow" style="display: inline-block; position: relative; top: 5px;"><iframe allowtransparency="true" class="twitter-follow-button twitter-follow-button" data-twttr-rendered="true" frameborder="0" id="twitter-widget-0" scrolling="no" src="http://platform.twitter.com/widgets/follow_button.1404859412.html#_=1406442550890&id=twitter-widget-0&lang=en&screen_name=africawriter&show_count=false&show_screen_name=true&size=m" style="height: 20px; width: 131px;" title="Twitter Follow Button"></iframe></span> <span class="pb-twitter-follow" style="display: inline-block; position: relative; top: 5px;"><iframe allowtransparency="true" class="twitter-follow-button twitter-follow-button" data-twttr-rendered="true" frameborder="0" id="twitter-widget-1" scrolling="no" src="http://platform.twitter.com/widgets/follow_button.1404859412.html#_=1406442550900&id=twitter-widget-1&lang=en&screen_name=agearan&show_count=false&show_screen_name=true&size=m" style="height: 20px; width: 114px;" title="Twitter Follow Button"></iframe></span> <span class="pb-twitter-follow" style="display: inline-block; position: relative; top: 5px;"><iframe allowtransparency="true" class="twitter-follow-button twitter-follow-button" data-twttr-rendered="true" frameborder="0" id="twitter-widget-2" scrolling="no" src="http://platform.twitter.com/widgets/follow_button.1404859412.html#_=1406442550905&id=twitter-widget-2&lang=en&screen_name=reglash&show_count=false&show_screen_name=true&size=m" style="height: 20px; width: 110px;" title="Twitter Follow Button"></iframe></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span class="dateline">JERUSALEM —</span> Palestinian and Israeli casualties are mounting at a pace that could surpass any other Israeli conflict in nearly a decade, amid signs of a deepening military and political stalemate driven by diplomatic gridlock, Palestinian militant resilience and the absence of a clear Israeli exit strategy.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The rising death toll in the Gaza Strip conflict propelled U.S. and European diplomats huddled in Paris to call for an extension of a 12-hour humanitarian truce Saturday that had afforded both sides a brief respite from the nearly three-week-old conflict.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Late Saturday, Israel approved a 24-hour extension of the truce but said it would retaliate if Hamas prevented its forces from continuing to destroy tunnel networks through which the militants have attempted to infiltrate Israel. Hamas fighters, though, resumed firing rockets and mortar rounds into Israel.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">An Israeli soldier was killed early Sunday morning, despite the additional 24-hour cease-fire. The death brings to 43 the number of soldiers killed since Israel started its ground operation in Gaza. While Israel seemed to observe its ceasefire commitment, Hamas continued to fire rockets into Israel, including six rockets fired Sunday morning towards Israel’s second largest city, Tel Aviv.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">A Hamas spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri, rejected the truce extension, saying that any humanitarian cease-fire must include Israeli soldiers withdrawing from Gaza and allow displaced Gazans to return to their homes.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><div class="wp-volt-gal-slide wp-volt-gal-photo wp-volt-gal-item-loaded" data-buy="false" data-caption="An explosion during an Israeli airstrike in the northern Gaza Strip is pictured from the Israeli border with Gaza before the cease-fire took effect. The death toll in Gaza soared to more than 1,000 as bodies were pulled from the rubble during the 12-hour truce that top diplomats urged Israel and Hamas to extend." data-credit="Ronen Zvulun/Reuters" data-image="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/26/Foreign/Images/2014-07-26T093723Z_01_JER104_RTRIDSP_3_MIDEAST-GAZA.jpg?env=A" data-max-width="2237" data-ratio="1.532" data-title="July 26, 2014" data-uuid="355edd18-14ef-11e4-8936-26932bcfd6ed" style="background-image: url(http://www.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_606w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/26/Foreign/Images/2014-07-26T093723Z_01_JER104_RTRIDSP_3_MIDEAST-GAZA.jpg?env=A); background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; background-size: contain; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 398px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 599px;">
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<div class="wp-volt-gal-slide wp-volt-gal-photo wp-volt-gal-item-loaded" data-buy="false" data-caption="" data-credit="" data-image="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/06/05/Foreign/Images/Warning1004-Copy.jpg?env=A" data-max-width="1600" data-ratio="1.333" data-title=" " data-uuid="7e003cde-ecb2-11e3-9f5c-9075d5508f0a" style="background-image: url(http://www.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_606w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/06/05/Foreign/Images/Warning1004-Copy.jpg?env=A); background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; background-size: contain; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 398px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 599px;">
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<div class="wp-volt-gal-slide wp-volt-gal-photo wp-volt-gal-item-loaded" data-buy="false" data-caption="A Palestinian woman hauls a TV that she salvaged from her destroyed home in Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip. " data-credit="Oliver Weiken/European Pressphoto Agency" data-image="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/26/Foreign/Images/04331547-14210.jpg?env=A" data-max-width="4096" data-ratio="1.5" data-title="July 26, 2014" data-uuid="87836168-14ea-11e4-98ee-daea85133bc9" style="background-image: url(http://www.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_606w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/26/Foreign/Images/04331547-14210.jpg?env=A); background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; background-size: contain; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 398px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 599px;">
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<div class="wp-volt-gal-slide wp-volt-gal-photo wp-volt-gal-item-loaded" data-buy="false" data-caption="The rubble of destroyed buildings and homes in the Shijaiyah residential district of Gaza City. " data-credit="Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty Images" data-image="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/26/Foreign/Images/Nic6354694.jpg?env=A" data-max-width="5610" data-ratio="1.482" data-title="July 26, 2014" data-uuid="4364810a-14eb-11e4-98ee-daea85133bc9" style="background-image: url(http://www.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_606w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/26/Foreign/Images/Nic6354694.jpg?env=A); background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; background-size: contain; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 398px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 599px;">
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<div class="wp-volt-gal-slide wp-volt-gal-photo wp-volt-gal-item-loaded" data-buy="false" data-caption="Palestinian rescue officers remove a body from the rubble of a building where at least 20 members of an extended family were killed, including at least 10 children, by an Israeli airstrike in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip." data-credit="Eyad Baba/AP" data-image="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/26/Foreign/Images/Mideast_Israel_Palestinians-0d0bc.jpg?env=A" data-max-width="3504" data-ratio="1.5" data-title="July 26, 2014" data-uuid="5584e87a-14eb-11e4-98ee-daea85133bc9" style="background-image: url(http://www.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_606w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/26/Foreign/Images/Mideast_Israel_Palestinians-0d0bc.jpg?env=A); background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; background-size: contain; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 398px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 599px;">
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<div class="wp-volt-gal-slide wp-volt-gal-photo" data-buy="false" data-caption="Palestinian men leave after they salvaged goods from destroyed houses during a short period of cease-fire in Shijaiyah." data-credit="Oliver Weiken/European Pressphoto Agency" data-image="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/26/Foreign/Images/04331910.jpg?env=A" data-max-width="4096" data-ratio="1.5" data-title="July 26, 2014" data-uuid="d2f09706-14ea-11e4-98ee-daea85133bc9" style="background-image: url(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/projects/supergrid/img/loading-black-100x100.gif); background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 398px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 599px;">
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<div class="wp-volt-gal-slide wp-volt-gal-photo" data-buy="false" data-caption="Palestinians work at a barber shop that was damaged amid Israeli tank fire and airstrikes." data-credit="Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty Images" data-image="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/26/Foreign/Images/Nic6354699.jpg?env=A" data-max-width="4680" data-ratio="1.479" data-title="July 26, 2014" data-uuid="08671eaa-14eb-11e4-98ee-daea85133bc9" style="background-image: url(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/projects/supergrid/img/loading-black-100x100.gif); background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 398px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 599px;">
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<div class="wp-volt-gal-slide wp-volt-gal-photo" data-buy="false" data-caption="Palestinians run after they hear an Israeli tank move from its position behind a hill, close to the border with Israel." data-credit="Lefteris Pitarakis/AP" data-image="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/26/Foreign/Images/Mideast_Israel_Palestinians-07b6b.jpg?env=A" data-max-width="4560" data-ratio="1.439" data-title="July 26, 2014" data-uuid="a964fca0-14eb-11e4-98ee-daea85133bc9" style="background-image: url(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/projects/supergrid/img/loading-black-100x100.gif); background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 398px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 599px;">
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<div class="wp-volt-gal-slide wp-volt-gal-photo" data-buy="false" data-caption="A Palestinian man walks by buildings heavily damaged by Israeli airstrikes in Beit Hanoun, in the northern Gaza Strip." data-credit="Lefteris Pitarakis/AP" data-image="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/26/Foreign/Images/Mideast_Israel_Palestinians-00660.jpg?env=A" data-max-width="5184" data-ratio="1.5" data-title="July 26, 2014" data-uuid="6bab4b32-14e9-11e4-98ee-daea85133bc9" style="background-image: url(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/projects/supergrid/img/loading-black-100x100.gif); background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 398px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 599px;">
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<div class="wp-volt-gal-slide wp-volt-gal-photo" data-buy="false" data-caption="A man cries upon his return to his family’s house, which was destroyed by Israeli airstrikes in Beit Hanoun. " data-credit="Lefteris Pitarakis/AP" data-image="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/26/Foreign/Images/Mideast_Israel_Palestinians-09b4b.jpg?env=A" data-max-width="5088" data-ratio="1.472" data-title="July 26, 2014" data-uuid="802c5178-14e9-11e4-98ee-daea85133bc9" style="background-image: url(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/projects/supergrid/img/loading-black-100x100.gif); background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 398px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 599px;">
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<div class="wp-volt-gal-slide wp-volt-gal-photo" data-buy="false" data-caption="Palestinians walk past an unexploded Israeli tank shell outside Beit Hanoun." data-credit="Oliver Weiken/European Pressphoto Agency" data-image="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/26/Foreign/Images/04331546.jpg?env=A" data-max-width="4096" data-ratio="1.499" data-title="July 26, 2014" data-uuid="9a1f63da-14ea-11e4-98ee-daea85133bc9" style="background-image: url(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/projects/supergrid/img/loading-black-100x100.gif); background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 398px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 599px;">
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JULY 25, 2014</div>
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<div class="wp-volt-gal-slide wp-volt-gal-photo" data-buy="false" data-caption="An Israeli artillery shell is fired from southern Israel into the Gaza Strip. On Friday, Israeli cabinet ministers rejected U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry’s proposal for a cease-fire in Gaza, according to Israeli news media accounts." data-credit="Jim Hollander/European Pressphoto Agency" data-image="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/25/Foreign/Images/04330786.jpg?env=A" data-max-width="4096" data-ratio="1.55" data-title="July 25, 2014  " data-uuid="94b7138c-143d-11e4-8936-26932bcfd6ed" style="background-image: url(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/projects/supergrid/img/loading-black-100x100.gif); background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 398px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 599px;">
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<div class="wp-volt-gal-slide wp-volt-gal-photo" data-buy="false" data-caption="Smoke billows from a building hit by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City. " data-credit="Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty Images" data-image="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/25/Foreign/Images/Nic6354385.jpg?env=A" data-max-width="5760" data-ratio="1.5" data-title="July 25, 2014 " data-uuid="7b99970c-143e-11e4-8936-26932bcfd6ed" style="background-image: url(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/projects/supergrid/img/loading-black-100x100.gif); background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 398px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 599px;">
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<div class="wp-volt-gal-slide wp-volt-gal-photo" data-buy="false" data-caption="An Israeli Apache helicopter sets off an anti-missile flare as it approaches Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip. " data-credit="Jim Hollander/European Pressphoto Agency" data-image="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/25/Foreign/Images/04330801.jpg?env=A" data-max-width="1819" data-ratio="1.407" data-title="July 25, 2014 " data-uuid="9089711e-143e-11e4-8936-26932bcfd6ed" style="background-image: url(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/projects/supergrid/img/loading-black-100x100.gif); background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 398px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 599px;">
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<div class="wp-volt-gal-slide wp-volt-gal-photo" data-buy="false" data-caption="A rocket is fired from the northern Gaza Strip toward Israel. " data-credit="Ronen Zvulun/Reuters" data-image="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/25/Foreign/Images/2014-07-25T192717Z_01_JER108_RTRIDSP_3_MIDEAST-GAZA-ISRAEL-CEASEFIRE.jpg?env=A" data-max-width="3500" data-ratio="1.565" data-title="July 25, 2014 " data-uuid="0633ef68-143d-11e4-8936-26932bcfd6ed" style="background-image: url(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/projects/supergrid/img/loading-black-100x100.gif); background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 398px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 599px;">
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<div class="wp-volt-gal-slide wp-volt-gal-photo" data-buy="false" data-caption="From his hotel suite in Cairo, Secretary of State John F. Kerry talks to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about terms of a cease-fire in Gaza between Israel and Hamas. " data-credit="AP" data-image="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/25/Foreign/Images/deast_Egypt_Israel_Palestinians_Kerry_US-08450-14213.jpg?env=A" data-max-width="5160" data-ratio="1.561" data-title=" July 25, 2014" data-uuid="38067ab4-143e-11e4-8936-26932bcfd6ed" style="background-image: url(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/projects/supergrid/img/loading-black-100x100.gif); background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 398px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 599px;">
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<div class="wp-volt-gal-slide wp-volt-gal-photo" data-buy="false" data-caption="Palestinians throw stones at members of the Israeli army during the funeral of three Palestinians, who medics said were killed during clashes with Israeli troops, in Beit Ommar, a town north of the West Bank city of Hebron. " data-credit="Mussa Issa Qawasma/Reuters" data-image="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/25/Foreign/Images/2014-07-25T183957Z_01_GAZ45_RTRIDSP_3_MIDEAST-GAZA-WESTBANK.jpg?env=A" data-max-width="3500" data-ratio="1.492" data-title="July 25, 2014 " data-uuid="46d9db76-143e-11e4-8936-26932bcfd6ed" style="background-image: url(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/projects/supergrid/img/loading-black-100x100.gif); background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 398px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 599px;">
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<div class="wp-volt-gal-slide wp-volt-gal-photo" data-buy="false" data-caption="Palestinians in Beit Ommar set fire to an Israeli army outpost during the funeral of three Palestinians, who medics said were killed during clashes with Israeli troops." data-credit="Mussa Issa Qawasma/Reuters" data-image="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/25/Foreign/Images/2014-07-25T184848Z_01_GAZ46_RTRIDSP_3_MIDEAST-GAZA-WESTBANK.jpg?env=A" data-max-width="3500" data-ratio="1.5" data-title="July 25, 2014  " data-uuid="27c6130c-143f-11e4-8936-26932bcfd6ed" style="background-image: url(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/projects/supergrid/img/loading-black-100x100.gif); background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 398px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 599px;">
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<div class="wp-volt-gal-slide wp-volt-gal-photo" data-buy="false" data-caption="Palestinians set fire to a barricade near an Israeli security guard tower during clashes in the West Bank city of Hebron. As the Israeli offensive continues in Gaza, conflict and rioting is beginning to spread to the West Bank. " data-credit="Abed Al Hashlamoun/European Pressphoto Agency" data-image="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/25/Foreign/Images/04330979.jpg?env=A" data-max-width="4096" data-ratio="1.586" data-title=" July 25, 2014" data-uuid="d67d879c-143d-11e4-8936-26932bcfd6ed" style="background-image: url(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/projects/supergrid/img/loading-black-100x100.gif); background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 398px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 599px;">
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<div class="wp-volt-gal-slide wp-volt-gal-photo" data-buy="false" data-caption="Palestinian supporters of Hamas take shelter while clashing with Israeli security forces near Ramallah in the West Bank. " data-credit="Andrew Burton/Getty Images" data-image="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/25/Foreign/Images/452668202.jpg?env=A" data-max-width="3500" data-ratio="1.5" data-title="July 25, 2014  " data-uuid="bb8ad3e8-143f-11e4-8936-26932bcfd6ed" style="background-image: url(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/projects/supergrid/img/loading-black-100x100.gif); background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 398px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 599px;">
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<div class="wp-volt-gal-slide wp-volt-gal-photo" data-buy="false" data-caption="People walk inside a U.N. school where hundreds of families have sought refuge after fleeing their homes following Israeli forces’ strikes in the northern Gaza Strip. " data-credit="Adel Hana/AP" data-image="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/25/Foreign/Images/Mideast_Israel_Palestinians-0afd9.jpg?env=A" data-max-width="4113" data-ratio="1.406" data-title=" July 25, 2014" data-uuid="dca292dc-143f-11e4-8936-26932bcfd6ed" style="background-image: url(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/projects/supergrid/img/loading-black-100x100.gif); background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 398px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 599px;">
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<div class="wp-volt-gal-slide wp-volt-gal-photo" data-buy="false" data-caption="Israeli soldiers walk on a dirt road next to an army deployment near the border between Israel and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. " data-credit="Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP/Getty Images" data-image="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/25/Foreign/Images/Nic6354424.jpg?env=A" data-max-width="5022" data-ratio="1.53" data-title=" July 25, 2014" data-uuid="8afb9348-143f-11e4-8936-26932bcfd6ed" style="background-image: url(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/projects/supergrid/img/loading-black-100x100.gif); background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 398px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 599px;">
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JULY 24, 2014 </div>
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<div class="wp-volt-gal-slide wp-volt-gal-photo" data-buy="false" data-caption="A crater is seen in the yard of the U.N. school in Beit Hanoun, in the northern Gaza Strip. Shells hit the elementary school, killing at least 15 people and wounding more than 100 who were seeking shelter from clashes on the streets outside. Initial reports indicated that the shells came from Israeli tanks. " data-credit="Adel Hana/AP" data-image="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/24/Foreign/Images/Mideast_Israel_Palestinians-0cc36.jpg?env=A" data-max-width="5760" data-ratio="1.5" data-title="July 24, 2014 " data-uuid="f2162d42-134d-11e4-8936-26932bcfd6ed" style="background-image: url(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/projects/supergrid/img/loading-black-100x100.gif); background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 398px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 599px;">
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<div class="wp-volt-gal-slide wp-volt-gal-photo" data-buy="false" data-caption="A sandal and a pool of blood remain at the site of the strike that hit the U.N. school in Beit Hanoun, in the northern Gaza Strip." data-credit="Adel Hana/AP" data-image="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/24/Foreign/Images/Mideast_Israel_Palestinians-09829.jpg?env=A" data-max-width="5760" data-ratio="1.5" data-title="July 24, 2014  " data-uuid="ca7b7d1e-134d-11e4-8936-26932bcfd6ed" style="background-image: url(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/projects/supergrid/img/loading-black-100x100.gif); background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 398px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 599px;">
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<div class="wp-volt-gal-slide wp-volt-gal-photo" data-buy="false" data-caption="A pool of blood is seen in the U.N.-operated school after the attack. Palestinian officials said he school was filled with women and children who had fled their homes to escape more than two weeks of fighting between Israel and Hamas, the militant Palestinian Islamist group that runs the Gaza Strip." data-credit="Mohammed Saber/European Pressphoto Agency" data-image="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/24/Foreign/Images/04328829.jpg?env=A" data-max-width="3700" data-ratio="1.5" data-title="July 24, 2014  " data-uuid="9954cc1c-134e-11e4-8936-26932bcfd6ed" style="background-image: url(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/projects/supergrid/img/loading-black-100x100.gif); background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 398px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 599px;">
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<div class="wp-volt-gal-slide wp-volt-gal-photo" data-buy="false" data-caption="A Palestinian family, who fled the U.N. school that was hit by shelling, arrives at the Beit Hanoun hospital." data-credit="Marco Longari/AFP/Getty Images" data-image="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/24/Foreign/Images/Nic6353565.jpg?env=A" data-max-width="3600" data-ratio="1.5" data-title="July 24, 2014  " data-uuid="f546eed0-134c-11e4-8936-26932bcfd6ed" style="background-image: url(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/projects/supergrid/img/loading-black-100x100.gif); background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 398px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 599px;">
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<div class="wp-volt-gal-slide wp-volt-gal-photo" data-buy="false" data-caption="A Palestinian man cries over the body of his son, who died when the U.N. school for refugees was hit." data-credit="Oliver Weiken/European Pressphoto Agency" data-image="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/24/Foreign/Images/04328880.jpg?env=A" data-max-width="4096" data-ratio="1.499" data-title="July 24, 2014  " data-uuid="4df10722-134e-11e4-8936-26932bcfd6ed" style="background-image: url(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/projects/supergrid/img/loading-black-100x100.gif); background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 398px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 599px;">
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<div class="wp-volt-gal-slide wp-volt-gal-photo" data-buy="false" data-caption="A Palestinian man holds a girl who medics said was injured in the shelling at a U.N.-run school sheltering Palestinian refugees." data-credit="Finbarr O'Reilly/Reuters" data-image="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/24/Foreign/Images/2014-07-24T152215Z_01_FOR13_RTRIDSP_3_MIDEAST-GAZA.jpg?env=A" data-max-width="3500" data-ratio="1.5" data-title="July 24, 2014  " data-uuid="e8367930-134d-11e4-8936-26932bcfd6ed" style="background-image: url(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/projects/supergrid/img/loading-black-100x100.gif); background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 398px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 599px;">
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<div class="wp-volt-gal-slide wp-volt-gal-photo" data-buy="false" data-caption="Palestinian doctors check a boy who got injured at the U.N. school, in the overcrowded emergency room of the Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahiya, Gaza Strip." data-credit="Oliver Weiken/European Pressphoto Agency" data-image="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/24/Production/Daily/A-Section/Images/04329041.jpg?env=A" data-max-width="4096" data-ratio="1.499" data-title="July 24, 2014 " data-uuid="1fd8967a-134e-11e4-8936-26932bcfd6ed" style="background-image: url(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/projects/supergrid/img/loading-black-100x100.gif); background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 398px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 599px;">
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<div class="wp-volt-gal-slide wp-volt-gal-photo" data-buy="false" data-caption="A Palestinian man carries the body of a 1-year-old baby, who died of wounds sustained after the U.N. school in Beit Hanun was shelled, in the morgue of the Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia." data-credit="Marco Longari/AFP/Getty Images" data-image="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/24/Foreign/Images/TS-Nic6353548.jpg?env=A" data-max-width="3600" data-ratio="1.5" data-title="July 24, 2014  " data-uuid="a8006c90-135c-11e4-8936-26932bcfd6ed" style="background-image: url(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/projects/supergrid/img/loading-black-100x100.gif); background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 398px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 599px;">
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<div class="wp-volt-gal-slide wp-volt-gal-photo" data-buy="false" data-caption="Palestinian responders rush two injured babies to the emergency room of the Kamal Adwain hospital in Beit Lahiya, Gaza Strip." data-credit="Oliver Weiken/European Pressphoto Agency" data-image="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/24/Foreign/Images/04328964.jpg?env=A" data-max-width="4096" data-ratio="1.499" data-title="July 24, 2014   " data-uuid="2ab262e8-1352-11e4-8936-26932bcfd6ed" style="background-image: url(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/projects/supergrid/img/loading-black-100x100.gif); background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 398px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 599px;">
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<div class="wp-volt-gal-slide wp-volt-gal-photo" data-buy="false" data-caption="Palestinian children wounded in the strike on the U.N. school in Beit Hanoun lie on the floor of an emergency room at the Kamal Adwain hospital in Beit Lahiya." data-credit="Lefteris Pitarakis/AP" data-image="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/24/Foreign/Images/Mideast_Israel_Palestinians-0f75e-14017.jpg?env=A" data-max-width="5184" data-ratio="1.5" data-title="July 24, 2014   " data-uuid="300ab3f8-1352-11e4-8936-26932bcfd6ed" style="background-image: url(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/projects/supergrid/img/loading-black-100x100.gif); background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 398px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 599px;">
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<div class="wp-volt-gal-slide wp-volt-gal-photo" data-buy="false" data-caption="Relatives of Palestinians who medics said were killed in the shelling at a U.N-run school sheltering Palestinian refugees mourn outside a hospital morgue in the northern Gaza Strip." data-credit="Mohamed Salem/Reuters" data-image="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/24/Foreign/Images/2014-07-24T144915Z_01_GAZ56_RTRIDSP_3_MIDEAST-GAZA-SCHOOL.jpg?env=A" data-max-width="3500" data-ratio="1.545" data-title="July 24, 2014  " data-uuid="32cd1fbc-134e-11e4-8936-26932bcfd6ed" style="background-image: url(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/projects/supergrid/img/loading-black-100x100.gif); background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 398px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 599px;">
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<div class="wp-volt-gal-slide wp-volt-gal-photo" data-buy="false" data-caption="A Palestinian mother mourns over the body of her son, Abd al-Karim al-Shibari, who was killed after the U.N. school was hit." data-credit="Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty Images" data-image="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/24/Foreign/Images/Nic6353566.jpg?env=A" data-max-width="5475" data-ratio="1.504" data-title="July 24, 2014  " data-uuid="f2138278-134c-11e4-8936-26932bcfd6ed" style="background-image: url(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/projects/supergrid/img/loading-black-100x100.gif); background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 398px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 599px;">
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<div class="wp-volt-gal-slide wp-volt-gal-photo" data-buy="false" data-caption="Palestinian children wounded in the attack on the school lie on the floor of the emergency room at the Kamal Adwain hospital in Beit Lahiya." data-credit="Lefteris Pitarakis/AP" data-image="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/24/Foreign/Images/Mideast_Israel_Palestinians-0cc63.jpg?env=A" data-max-width="5760" data-ratio="1.5" data-title="July 24, 2014  " data-uuid="0d8bb0e2-134e-11e4-8936-26932bcfd6ed" style="background-image: url(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/projects/supergrid/img/loading-black-100x100.gif); background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 398px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 599px;">
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<div class="wp-volt-gal-slide wp-volt-gal-photo" data-buy="false" data-caption="A Palestinian child wounded in the shelling cries at the emergency room of the Kamal Adwain hospital in Beit Lahiya." data-credit="Lefteris Pitarakis/AP" data-image="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/24/Foreign/Images/Mideast_Israel_Palestinians-0da71.jpg?env=A" data-max-width="4965" data-ratio="1.467" data-title="July 24, 2014  " data-uuid="1471f5d8-134e-11e4-8936-26932bcfd6ed" style="background-image: url(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/projects/supergrid/img/loading-black-100x100.gif); background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 398px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 599px;">
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<div class="wp-volt-gal-slide wp-volt-gal-photo" data-buy="false" data-caption="A Palestinian helps his injured son at the Kamal Adwain hospital." data-credit="Oliver Weiken/European Pressphoto Agency" data-image="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/24/Foreign/Images/04328928.jpg?env=A" data-max-width="4096" data-ratio="1.499" data-title="July 24, 2014  " data-uuid="08412a0e-134e-11e4-8936-26932bcfd6ed" style="background-image: url(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/projects/supergrid/img/loading-black-100x100.gif); background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 398px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 599px;">
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<div class="wp-volt-gal-slide wp-volt-gal-photo" data-buy="false" data-caption="A Palestinian girl is treated at a hospital in the northern Gaza Strip." data-credit="Mohammed Salem/Reuters" data-image="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/24/Foreign/Images/2014-07-24T162823Z_01_GAZ52_RTRIDSP_3_MIDEAST-GAZA-SCHOOL.jpg?env=A" data-max-width="3500" data-ratio="1.5" data-title="July 24, 2014 " data-uuid="b66b6178-1351-11e4-8936-26932bcfd6ed" style="background-image: url(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/projects/supergrid/img/loading-black-100x100.gif); background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 398px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 599px;">
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<div class="wp-volt-gal-slide wp-volt-gal-photo wp-volt-gal-item-loaded" data-buy="false" data-caption="A Palestinian mother comforts her child at a hospital in Jabaliya in the northern Gaza Strip." data-credit="Finbarr O'Reilly/Reuters" data-image="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/24/Foreign/Images/2014-07-24T155323Z_01_FOR15_RTRIDSP_3_MIDEAST-GAZA.jpg?env=A" data-max-width="3500" data-ratio="1.5" data-title="July 24, 2014  " data-uuid="58f2668a-134d-11e4-8936-26932bcfd6ed" style="background-image: url(http://www.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_606w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/24/Foreign/Images/2014-07-24T155323Z_01_FOR15_RTRIDSP_3_MIDEAST-GAZA.jpg?env=A); background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; background-size: contain; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 398px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 599px;">
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<div class="wp-volt-gal-slide wp-volt-gal-photo" data-buy="false" data-caption="Palestinian children wounded in the attack on the U.N. school in Beit Hanoun lie on the floor of the emergency room of the Kamal Adwain hospital." data-credit="Lefteris Pitarakis/AP" data-image="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/24/Foreign/Images/Mideast_Israel_Palestinians-097fd.jpg?env=A" data-max-width="5552" data-ratio="1.446" data-title="July 24, 2014  " data-uuid="03adbd54-134e-11e4-8936-26932bcfd6ed" style="background-image: url(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/projects/supergrid/img/loading-black-100x100.gif); background-position: 50% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; height: 398px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 599px;">
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The conflict’s devastation has left bomb craters and impassable streets. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span class="wp-volt-gal-caption-title" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">July 26, 2014</span><span class="wp-volt-gal-caption-text" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">An explosion during an Israeli airstrike in the northern Gaza Strip is pictured from the Israeli border with Gaza before the cease-fire took effect. The death toll in Gaza soared to more than 1,000 as bodies were pulled from the rubble during the 12-hour truce that top diplomats urged Israel and Hamas to extend.</span> <span class="wp-volt-gal-caption-credit" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Ronen Zvulun/Reuters</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Before the truce began Saturday morning, six Israeli soldiers were killed in battles across the Gaza Strip, Israel’s military said. Meanwhile, Palestinian deaths rose to more than 1,035 on Saturday, according to Gaza health officials, a dramatic increase since the beginning of the ground incursion. In Israel’s 2009 Gaza offensive, about 1,400 Palestinians were killed.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Increasingly, the conflict is becoming a war of attrition, military and intelligence analysts say, resembling Israel’s war with Lebanon more than its previous conflicts with Hamas in 2009 and 2012. In Lebanon, too, casualties on both sides were high. Hamas, like Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, has shown a determination to confront Israel with well-trained fighters, clear combat strategies and rockets — as well as its tunnel networks, the destruction of which is Israel’s stated objective.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Now, Israel is confronting the same kinds of divisive questions it faced in Lebanon: What are its goals in Gaza? And how long does it intend to remain there to achieve them? The questions underscore the country’s dilemma, torn between wanting a <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/07/26/why-cease-fire-is-such-a-difficult-word-in-the-current-israel-hamas-conflict/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;" title="www.washingtonpost.com">durable cease-fire</a> and wanting to destroy Hamas’s ability to torment Israelis.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“The more you drag on, the more you stay there, the more the exit strategy becomes a blur,” said Yossi Melman, an Israeli intelligence analyst. “We will be trapped there, and we will have more casualties. If we don’t have a clear vision of what we want to achieve, we unwittingly will find ourselves reoccupying Gaza again.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Neither side, nor any of the diplomats seeking an end to the crisis, wants that. In Paris, envoys from Qatar, Turkey, France, Britain, Germany, Italy and the United States worked late into the night Saturday in an attempt to win an extension of the cease-fire, despite the reignited tensions.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">They view a truce lasting several days — the goal of diplomatic efforts that fell short last week in Cairo — as a bridge to a sustainable cease-fire that would clear a path to addressing both sides’ demands. Israel wants to see Hamas demilitarized, while Hamas’s core demand is the lifting of Israel’s economic blockade of Gaza.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry met first with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, one of two key go-betweens for the United States, which is barred from direct contacts with Hamas leaders. “Palestinians need to live with dignity, freedom, with goods that can come in and out, and they need a life that is free from the current restraints that they feel on a daily basis, and obviously free from violence,” Kerry told reporters a day after his efforts to install a week-long truce fell short.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/world/gaza-rockets/" style="text-decoration: none;"><img class="" data-hi-res-src="http://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_1484w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/25/Foreign/Graphics/crossfire.jpg?uuid=m2KpUhRNEeSsVnc-VKZZBg" data-low-res-src="http://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_400w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/25/Foreign/Graphics/crossfire.jpg?uuid=m2KpUhRNEeSsVnc-VKZZBg" src="http://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_1484w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/25/Foreign/Graphics/crossfire.jpg?uuid=m2KpUhRNEeSsVnc-VKZZBg" style="border: 0px; width: 599px;" /></a><br /><span class="pb-caption">Graphic: See how many rockets Hamas has launched into Israel and how many targets Israel has struck in Gaza</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Even that oblique reference to the Israeli grip on Hamas-ruled Gaza was unusual for the United States, Israel’s principal ally and international defender.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“At the same time, Israelis need to live free from rockets and the tunnels that threaten them,” Kerry said, adding, “Every conversation we had embraces a discussion about these competing interests that are real for both.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Kerry met with the foreign minister of Qatar later in the day. Qatar is well placed as an intermediary, since the rich Persian Gulf state is presumed to fund Hamas, which seized control of Gaza in 2007, and hosts leader Khaled Meshal. Qatar is the likely source of funds to pay suspended salaries for government workers in Gaza, which cash-strapped Hamas has been unable to do.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">As a diplomatic breakthrough was sought, Gazans seized advantage of the pause in fighting. In the three hardest-hit towns, residents rushed back to gather belongings and search for missing relatives after 24 hours of intense fighting and heavy bombing by Israel that left deep impact craters where apartment blocks once stood.<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/depth-of-gaza-devastation-becomes-clear-after-cease-fire/2014/07/26/a5a01702-14c9-11e4-9285-4243a40ddc97_story.html?hpid=z2" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;" title="www.washingtonpost.com"> Whole neighborhoods were transformed</a> intoacres of twisted metal and concrete dust. More than 100 bodies were pulled from the rubble.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In the Shijaiyah neighborhood, east of central Gaza City, three brothers stood at the edge of a deep crater left by a large Israeli bomb. The day before it was their four-story apartment house, home to 30 family members. “We have nothing left,” said one of the brothers, Said Helou, 32, a baker.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Yussif Abid al-Hamid, an emergency medical technician, said it would take more than 12 hours to dig the bodies out from the debris. “We need heavy equipment here,” he said. “We need earthmovers. We can’t dig with our bare hands.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In southern Israel, where most of the Hamas rockets land, residents also welcomed the pause.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“All of a sudden you could hear the birds again,” said Adele Raemer, who lives in Kibbutz Nirim, nestled along the border.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In the nearby farming community of Netiv Ha’asara, Roni Keidar and her husband were making preparations for a mourning ceremony for one of their employees, a Thai worker killed Wednesday by a Hamas mortar lobbed from Gaza. He was the third civilian to be killed on the Israeli side.</span></div>
<div channel="!Daily" style="margin-bottom: 24px;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“It’s been a dreadful week,” Keidar said.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Even as it faces diplomatic pressure to agree to a durable truce, Israel has given mixed signals about its exit strategy from Gaza. Some Israeli military officials say they have a limited goal: to destroy Hamas’s vast tunnel network, which could take days, even weeks. Other government officials say they want to keep pressure on Hamas, entering deeper into urban areas to weaken it. That could embroil Israel in Gaza for weeks, possibly months.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“It is clear that, at least as far as the Israeli army is concerned, Israel’s work has not been accomplished yet,” said Giora Eiland, former head of Israel’s National Security Council, adding that the humanitarian cease-fire will “reduce pressure on Hamas.”</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 24px;">
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“Demilitarization should be the end goal, and everything short of that would be a mistake for Israel,” Eiland added.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Melman, the analyst, said he hoped there was “no hidden agenda to topple the Hamas regime,” because that could lead to more-radical militants taking control. “After Hamas, you could have ISIS,” he said, referring to the Islamic State, the group that has seized large swaths of Iraq.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It would be virtually impossible, he added, to get Hamas to give up its weapons. In killing 42 Israeli soldiers, Hamas already believes it is the victor and has the upper hand, he said.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The U.N.-brokered deal that ended the Lebanon war called for Hezbollah to be disarmed. Today, it is believed to be stronger than ever, its rockets still pointed at Israel.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Gearan reported from Paris. William Booth in Gaza City contributed to this report.</span></div>
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Gaza campaign on pace to become deadliest Israeli conflict in recent years

Editor’s Note: This video contains graphic content. Death toll passes 1,000 as the 12-hour truce allows Gazans to come home only to fi...

23:42

Something is happening in the spirit realm and God help us not to just know it but to do something about our lives

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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="color: blue; font-size: x-large;">After leveling Iraq’s Tomb of Jonah, the Islamic State could destroy ‘anything in the Bible’</span></span></h1>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Video of the destruction of the Tomb of Jonah, also known as the Mosque of Jonah, by the Islamic State. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Jonah’s main appearance in the Old Testament is short, but none too sweet.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">As recounted in the Book of Jonah, God asked Jonah to preach. Not thinking himself cut out for the evangelizing game, Jonah ran away to sea.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But then Yahweh sent a great storm. When Jonah’s shipmates found out he was running from the Man Upstairs, they regretfully threw him overboard. Rather than let Jonah drown, God sent a great fish (or a whale, depending on the translation) to swallow him and — yuck — vomit him on dry land. Once saved, Jonah did preach to the people — but then got angry with God when He spared the wicked.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The end.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But as reluctant a prophet as Jonah was, his purported tomb in Mosul, Iraq, is a holy site for Muslims – even though it’s not likely the final resting place of a man purported to live in a fish’s tummy for three days. Instead, wrote Columbia University Near Eastern history PhD student <a href="http://gatesofnineveh.wordpress.com/2014/07/11/what-is-the-tomb-of-the-prophet-jonah/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;">Christopher Jones</a>, the tomb is a sacred place “to meditate on the questions raised by the story of Jonah: questions of justice, obedience, providence, fairness and divine mercy.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Until this month, when it was destroyed by the Islamic State.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><img class="" data-hi-res-src="http://img.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp-content/uploads/sites/21/2014/07/04329142.jpg" data-low-res-src="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=http://img.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp-content/uploads/sites/21/2014/07/04329142.jpg&w=480" src="http://img.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp-content/uploads/sites/21/2014/07/04329142.jpg" style="border: 0px; width: 599px;" /><br /><span class="pb-caption">Iraqis inspect the wreckage of the grave of the Nebi Yunus, or the prophet Jonah, in Mosul, Iraq, on July 24, 2014. (EPA)</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><a href="http://news.yahoo.com/iraq-jihadists-blow-jonahs-tomb-mosul-official-220531959.html" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;">Agence France-Presse</a> confirmed rumors of the tomb’s fate with an Iraqi official. The official said Islamic State forces closed the mosque and took an hour wiring it with explosive charges. Then:</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Boom.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Jonah’s tomb “has been turned to dust,” the official said.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The Islamic State isn’t new to this. As it establishes a caliphate to spread its ultraconservative faith, it’s destroyed cultural artifacts including Sunni, Shia and Sufi sites, <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/isis-destroys-shiite-mosques-and-shrines-iraq-257683" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;">according to Newsweek</a>, and replaced the crosses on Mosul’s Syrian Orthodox cathedral with black flags.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Why?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“It indicates they are going for total eradication not just of their enemies but even of the possibility of people living together under their rule,” Sam Hardy, a professor at the American University of Rome and author of the blog <a href="http://conflictantiquities.wordpress.com/about-contact-employ/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;">Conflict Antiquities</a>, told The Washington Post in a phone interview.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“Sometimes the practitioners of a new religion feel compelled to recognize a place as sacred, and develop their own reasons to continue to venerate it,”<a href="http://gatesofnineveh.wordpress.com/2014/07/11/what-is-the-tomb-of-the-prophet-jonah/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;">Jones wrote</a>. “Other times, they choose to demonstrate the superiority of their own religion over other belief systems by destroying their sacred spaces and building their own in their place.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><img alt="A combination photo of the 55-metre-high Buddha statue in Bamiyan, central Afghanistan in December 18, 1997 (left) and after its destruction on March 26, 2001. It has been ten years since the statue was destroyed by the Taliban on March 2, 2001. REUTERS/Muzammil Pasha, Sayed Salahuddin/Files (AFGHANISTAN - Tags: RELIGION POLITICS ANNIVERSARY)" src="http://img.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp-content/uploads/sites/21/2014/07/BUDDHAS01_1299357901_14_0_1592758172-300x227.jpg" style="border: 0px; height: auto; max-width: 100%; width: auto;" /><br /><span class="pb-caption">Left: the 55-metre-high Buddha statue in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, on Dec. 18, 1997. Right: After its destruction on March 26, 2001. (REUTERS/Muzammil Pasha, Sayed Salahuddin)</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Of course, governments and religions have destroyed antiquities since, well, antiquity. Romans destroyed Jerusalem’s Second Temple not long after Christ. During the Crusades, Christians destroyed mosques. The Nazis destroyed <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/07/24/tired-of-selling-guns-and-drugs-try-art-theft-the-third-most-profitable-criminal-endeavor/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;">degenerate art</a>. And the Taliban destroyed the<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/28/AR2011022803105.html" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;">Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The problem: In Iraq, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/in-northern-iraq-gains-by-islamic-state-threaten-centuries-old-christian-town/2014/07/19/7088f3b6-0f53-11e4-8c9a-923ecc0c7d23_story.html" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;">the Islamic State is advancing.</a> If it’s willing to destroy anything other religions — even other Muslims — hold sacred, what’s next?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“Basically pretty much anything in the Bible,” Hardy said.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">What can be done?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“If we didn’t intervene when they were killing people, it would be kind of grotesque to intervene over a building,” Hardy said.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Perhaps the Islamic State will stop on its own?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“You think tactically they’d avoid provoking enemies,” Hardy said, but Islamic State forces “seem happy to do that. Possibly they are doing stuff to get media attention.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Mission accomplished.</span></div>
</article><br />
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/pb/justin-moyer" style="text-decoration: none;"></a></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="font-size: large;">In northern Iraq, gains by Islamic State threaten centuries-old Christian town</span></span></h1>
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<span class="pb-caption" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Hundreds of Christians are driven out of Mosul after being issued an ultimatum by Islamic State fighters to either convert to Islam pay a religious tax, or face the sword. (Reuters)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span class="dateline">BAKHDIDA, Iraq —</span> In the center of this hardscrabble Christian town there’s a 12th-century church where visitors can peer into an underground passageway that once allowed the faithful to hide from Muslim marauders.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The tunnels below have since crumbled, but the threat still looms on northern Iraq’s surrounding plains.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">When advancing Islamic State militants launched mortar attacks in late June, nearly all of Bakhdida’s 50,000 residents <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/iraqi-christians-seek-safety-with-kurds-as-thousands-flee-isils-advance/article19346793/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;">fled overland</a> to Irbil, the capital of the Iraqi region of Kurdistan, for protection. Were it not for Kurdish pesh merga forces that swept in to beat back the onslaught, this historic Christian enclave, known to locals as Qaraqosh, would be deserted.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In recent days, most people have come back to their homes. But dire water and fuel shortages, electrical blackouts and a lack of work are strangling returnees who must also grapple with the mental strain of living within firing range of al-Qaeda-inspired Sunni jihadists.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">With Iraq at risk of fracturing along sectarian fault lines, local leaders fear the loss of one of the world’s oldest Christian communities and its heritage as more and more residents move to Kurdish cities and neighboring countries. On Friday, the exodus was accelerated when the Islamic State<a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/07/iraq-christians-told-convert-face-death-2014718111040982432.html" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;">decreed</a> that Christian holdouts in the city of Mosul must convert to Islam or pay a special tax — with death as a “last resort.’’</span></div>
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<span class="pb-caption" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Five car bombs kill at least 26 people in mainly Shi'ite districts of Baghdad on Saturday. Sunni insurgents are within striking distance of Baghdad. (Reuters)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“Bags are packed; people are leaving for good because it’s almost impossible to live here right now,” said Louis Marcus Ayub, 54, a Syrian Catholic member of the Bakhdida city council. “If there is no political solution, we’re in danger of disappearing.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Iraqi Christians have endured greater <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2010/11/24/november-26-2010-disappearing-christians-of-iraq/7568/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;">persecution</a> since the 2003 U.S. invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. In the sectarian conflict that followed, a surge of harassment, church bombings and other deadly attacks caused the population to shrink from 1.5 million to about 400,000.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In 2008, a <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95343489" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;">wave of violence</a> targeted Christians living in Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city and an ancient hub of Christianity in the region. Without a militia of their own, thousands found safe haven in Bakhdida, about 19 miles to the southeast.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">When Islamic State militants staged a lightning attack June 10 on Mosul and took over the city, fresh waves of Christians fled to Bakhdida; only this time, militants stayed on their heels. In less than 48 hours, a flurry of mortar rounds and stories of kidnapping and murder of their co-religionists in Syria combined to empty the town.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“They want to kill us,” said Martin Jameel, 25, a shopkeeper who had just come back from Ainkawa, a Christian suburb of Irbil full of displaced families, to check on his goods. “We have no oil, no weapons. We are not Muslims, so they think we are enemies.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The Syrian Catholic Archbishop of Mosul, Yohannna Petros Mouche, was one of the few who stayed behind. He understood that many families had left “to lead dignified lives,” but he’s resolved not to go.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“If we all leave, it sends the message that there is nowhere safe for Christians to live in Iraq — and this worries me,” he said, gripping the pewter cross that hung heavy from his neck.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><a href="http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/world/map-how-isis-is-carving-out-a-new-country/1095/" style="text-decoration: none;"><img class="" data-hi-res-src="http://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_1484w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/03/National-Enterprise/Graphics/w-isis-Iraq-Syria_7-2-14_promo.jpg?uuid=ZXqcLAMFEeSGbpQiagK8jQ" data-low-res-src="http://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_400w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/03/National-Enterprise/Graphics/w-isis-Iraq-Syria_7-2-14_promo.jpg?uuid=ZXqcLAMFEeSGbpQiagK8jQ" src="http://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_1484w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/03/National-Enterprise/Graphics/w-isis-Iraq-Syria_7-2-14_promo.jpg?uuid=ZXqcLAMFEeSGbpQiagK8jQ" style="border: 0px; width: 599px;" /></a><br /><span class="pb-caption">How ISIS is carving out a new country</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“I’m not a vagabond. This is my home, and I will die here if necessary.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The seminary he overseas in Bakhdida had already become a way station for 35 Christian families and clergy from Mosul. According to Father Amanoel Adel Kalloo, one of the displaced, the city’s Christian community has plunged from about 3,000 to between 200 to 300 since the Islamic State takeover.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">On two trips back to the city to collect belongings, he saw that the homes of religious leaders had been ransacked and taken over by militants, he said.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Muslims renting property from Christians have been ordered to pay the Islamic State instead, and employers have been told to lay off all Christian workers. For the first time in 1,600 years, there is no Sunday Mass.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">While lives have so far been spared, Kalloo said the early July disappearance of two women who ran an orphanage, along with three children under their care, has stoked anxieties. He believes the rebel group was behind the abduction, but no one has yet received any information on their condition or whereabouts.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In Bakhdida, residents are grateful to Kurdish forces that have established a security perimeter around the city, allowing some breathing room for people to return. The Kurds have since outfitted a local Christian “protection committee” with bulletproof vests and assault rifles to patrol the streets.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">No hostilities have been exchanged in more than two weeks, but if Islamic State militants go on the offensive again, “we will defend them [the Christians] until the last drop of blood,” vowed Capt. Mohammad Kamal Nader, a pesh merga officer in charge of the security at the town’s main checkpoint. “It is our duty.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">For now, the overwhelming concern is water. Area taps have run dry since the Islamic State took Mosul and cut off the town’s Tigris River water supply amid 100-degree-plus temperatures.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">All water now has to be trucked in from outside at great expense.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Adding to people’s woes are electricity blackouts for the better part of each day. The main hospital is short of doctors who have stopped coming from Mosul. And without funds to pay town employees, heaps of garbage are piling up along sidewalks that remain largely empty throughout the day.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Bashar Toma, a 50-year-old mason, was among those preparing to leave. Last month, a pair of Islamic State mortars crashed onto the roof of the six-bedroom home Toma had painstakingly built to accommodate his children.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He thanked God that no one was hurt. But the constant psychological stress of living less than three miles from an aggressive and well-armed rebel force — whose forward positions are visible from his roof — has become too much to bear for the lifelong resident.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In the morning, Toma would move his family to a cramped apartment in Irbil.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“It hurts my heart to leave,” he said, “but I fear it will only get worse here.”</span></div>
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-size: large;"><b>What Jihadists are Doing in Syria and Iraq While Gaza Grabs the Headlines</b></span><br />
<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">By Ishaan Tharoor</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="border-bottom-width: 0px; width: 599px;"><img class="" data-hi-res-src="http://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_908w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/05/Foreign/Images/Nic6346128.jpg" data-low-res-src="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=http://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_908w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/05/Foreign/Images/Nic6346128.jpg&w=480" src="http://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_908w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/07/05/Foreign/Images/Nic6346128.jpg" style="border: 0px; width: 599px;" /></span><br /><span class="pb-caption">An image grab taken from a propaganda video released on July 5, 2014, by al-Furqan Media allegedly shows the leader of the Islamic State  jihadist group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a.k.a Caliph Ibrahim, adressing Muslim worshippers at a mosque in the militant-held northern Iraqi city of Mosul.  (AFP PHOTO/HO/AL-FURQAN MEDIA)</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The world is transfixed by the conflict in Gaza, as the death tolls of both Palestinians and Israelis killed in the fighting continue to rise. It has animated global public opinion and <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/07/22/how-the-gaza-conflict-is-being-fought-in-8-cities-across-the-world/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;" target="_blank">sparked protests</a> in myriad far-flung cities.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But as the rockets and bombs fall, a deadlier war next door rolls on. The Syrian civil war has claimed 170,000 lives in three years; this past weekend's death toll in Syria was greater than what took place in Gaza. By some accounts, the past week may have been <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28454655" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;" target="_blank">the deadliest</a> in the conflict's grim history. Meanwhile, the extremist insurgents of the Islamic State (also <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/06/18/isis-or-isil-the-debate-over-what-to-call-iraqs-terror-group/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;" target="_blank">known as ISIS</a>), have continued their ravages over a swath of territory stretching from eastern Syria to the environs of Baghdad, Iraq's capital; the spike in violence in Iraq has led to more than <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/18/iraqi-civilian-death-toll-5500-2014-isis" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;" target="_blank">5,500 civilian deaths</a> in the first six months of this year.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Over the weekend, Islamic State militants battled forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad over a gas field in central Syria. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, some 700 people have died in just two days of fighting, <a href="http://syriahr.com/en/index.php?option=com_news&nid=2361&Itemid=2&task=displaynews#.U9A-1vldXTo" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;" target="_blank">including employees</a> working at the facility.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Hundreds of miles away in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, activists and observers <a href="http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/07/19/iraq-isis-abducting-killing-expelling-minorities" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;" target="_blank">report</a> a ferocious campaign against religious minorities waged by the Islamic State, which earlier declared <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/06/30/the-new-islamic-caliphate-and-its-war-against-history/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;" target="_blank">the establishment of a "caliphate"</a> in the lands it controls. The jihadists, who espouse a puritanical, intolerant brand of Sunni Islam, have instituted strict sharia law. According to the Associated Press, the militants have even forced shopkeepers in Mosul to <a href="http://english.alarabiya.net/en/variety/2014/07/22/Veil-your-mannequins-ISIS-tells-Iraqi-shopkeepers.html" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;" target="_blank">place veils</a> over the mannequins in their storefront windows.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Their other activities are far less amusing. On Thursday, a UN official told the BBC that the Islamic State had <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28466434" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;" target="_blank">issued a fatwa</a>, ordering female circumcision for all girls and women between the ages of 11 and 46. But according to at least <a href="https://twitter.com/LeilaFadel/status/492292473272561665" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;" target="_blank">one journalist</a>, who spoke with residents in Mosul, that report may be false.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Even then, the Islamic State has moved rapidly away from earlier proclamations encouraging coexistence. They ordered all Christians to either convert or leave towns and cities where the Islamic State holds sway by July 19. Otherwise, they would face execution. That edict triggered a sad exodus of Christian minorities in Iraq's embattled Nineveh plains, once the heartland for some of the world's most ancient Christian communities. The militants have <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/19/world/middleeast/isis-forces-last-iraqi-christians-to-flee-mosul.html" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;" target="_blank">defiled historic tombs</a>, seized monasteries, kidnapped nuns and killed other minorities.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In total, more than 600,000 Iraqis were driven from their homes in June alone, a direct result of the Islamic State's dramatic advance through the country. (See the map below to get a sense of how Iraq's many upheavals have shaken its population since the 2003 U.S. invasion.)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><img alt="Two Million Iraq Displacement v4" src="http://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/files/2014/07/iraqrefugeemap.jpg" style="border: 0px; max-width: 600px; width: 599px;" /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Courtesy of the International Rescue Committee.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">A report from Human Rights Watch published last week <a href="http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/07/19/iraq-isis-abducting-killing-expelling-minorities" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;" target="_blank">documented</a>recent murders, abductions and attacks suffered by religious and ethnic minorities in and around Mosul:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Since capturing Mosul on June 10, 2014, the armed Sunni extremist group has seized at least 200 Turkmen, Shabaks, and Yazidis, killed at least 11 of them, and ordered all Christians to convert to Islam, pay “tribute” money, or leave Mosul by July 19.<br /><br />On June 29, ISIS abducted two nuns and three Christian orphans, whom it held for 15 days. Around that same time, ISIS issued orders barring Yazidi and Christian employees, as well as ethnic Kurds, from returning to their government jobs in Mosul, two regional government officials and a priest told Human Rights Watch.<br /><br />Virtually all Turkmen and Shabaks – tens of thousands of families – have fled their communities near Mosul as a result of ISIS raids, in which the fighters seize local men and pillage homes and places of worship, residents of those villages said. Mosul’s few remaining Christian families also have fled, local priests said.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">On Sunday in Baghdad, the country's foremost Christian cleric, the Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Louis Raphael Sako, lamented in a special sermon the fate of his flock. "How in the 21st century could people be forced from their houses just because they are Christian, or Shi'ite or Sunni or Yazidi?" he <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/21/isis-genghis-khan-iraq-chaldean_n_5603939.html?ir=Religion" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;" target="_blank">asked</a>. "Christian families have been expelled from their houses and their valuables were stolen and ...their houses and property expropriated in the name of the Islamic State."</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He went on to make a chilling, grand historic proclamation: "This has never happened in Christian or Islamic history. Even Genghis Khan or Hulagu didn't do this," he said. Hulagu Khan was the Mongol warlord whose horde swept through Mosul en route to sacking Baghdad in 1258, a bloody slaughter that snuffed out <a href="http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Abbasid_Caliphate.html" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;" target="_blank">the proud Abbasid caliphate</a> that had flourished there since the 8th century. Baghdad would take hundreds of years to reemerge as a political center. Sako may be indulging in hyperbole, but he echoes the sense of fear and uncertainty now gripping the region.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In the face of these traumas, some construe the heated attention on casualties in Gaza to reflect a kind of <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/07/obsessing-about-gaza-ignoring-syria-and-most-everything-else/374898/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;" target="_blank">anti-Israeli bias</a>. That's a bit much: the thorny Israeli-Palestinian crisis is at the heart of regional geopolitics and polarizes the conversation in ways the upheavals further east just don't. No one, for example, is <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2014/07/23/the-most-vile-op-ed-you-will-read-about-gaza/?hpid=z3" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(212, 212, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; text-decoration: none; zoom: 1;" target="_blank">trying to make excuses</a> for the loss of civilian life in Iraq or Syria. But many more should be aware of how alarming the situation has grown.</span></div>
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After leveling Iraq’s Tomb of Jonah, the Islamic State could destroy ‘anything in the Bible’ Video of the destruction of the T...

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Something is happening in the spirit realm and God help us not to just know it but to do something about our lives

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