Israeli forces hit Hamas tunnels in Gaza as an all-out war looms. “Israel dramatically escalated its assault on the Gaza Strip early Friday with a combined air and artillery barrage aimed at destroying Hamas’s tunnel system, marking the addition of ground forces for the first time in the five-day battle and tipping the conflict closer to all-out war. The conflict, which shows no sign of abating, has so far resulted in the deaths of 119 people in Gaza and nine in Israel, with hundreds more injured,” Steve Hendrix, Michael Miller and Shira Rubin report. “Violence and unrest continued to spread across Israel and the Palestinian territories overnight. In the West Bank — where tensions among residents, Israeli soldiers, Palestinian Authority security forces and Jewish settlers already made for a volatile brew — clashes erupted in Ramallah, Bethlehem, Nablus and other West Bank cities. Settlers set fire to wide swaths of Palestinian farmland, according to the Israeli human rights group B’tsalem.”
