Official says move will allow Israel Defence Forces to expand attacks ‘against Hamas and the other terror organisations’

Israel has said it is calling up another 16,000 reserves following a security cabinet meeting that decided to keep up military operations in Gaza, ignoring international pressure for an immediate ceasefire.

The move will allow the Israeli military to substantially widen its 23-day campaign against Hamas, which has already claimed more than 1,360 Palestinian lives – most of them civilians – and reduced entire Gaza neighbourhoods to rubble. Fifty-six Israeli soldiers and three Israeli civilians have died during the campaign.

Israel has now called up a total of 86,000 reserves during the Gaza conflict. At least 19 air strikes were carried out overnight, officials said.

Against a background of heavy fighting in Gaza and the shelling of a UN-run school, the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, convened his senior colleagues in a security cabinet on Wednesday to discuss the crisis amid warnings that Hamas’s demands for lifting the siege of the Palestinian coastal enclave were a “non-starter” and stalling ceasefire efforts in Cairo.

Israel was not close to a ceasefire, the newspaper Haaretz quoted an unnamed senior official as saying after the five-hour cabinet meeting.

“When a ceasefire proposal that answers Israel’s important needs is laid on the table, it will be considered. The operation continues and the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] will expand its attacks against Hamas and the other terror organisations.” Temporary humanitarian ceasefires would continue, the official said.

The White House, which has been at odds with Netanyahu over efforts to secure a ceasefire, reacted to the shelling of the school by issuing an unusually firm condemnation of the incident and expressing serious concern that thousands of Palestinians taking shelter in supposed UN havens were now at risk.

The US condemned the attack but refused to apportion blame and, hours later, confirmed it had recently provided Israel with a shipment of ammunition, after the country’s existing supplies appeared to be running low.

The provision of ammunition could prove controversial for Washington, which has expressed growing concern about the deaths of Palestinian civilians while maintaining support for its close ally.

“The US is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to US national interests to assist Israel to develop and maintain a strong and ready self-defence capability,” said the Pentagon press secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby. “This defence sale is consistent with those objectives.”

The Israeli military requested the additional ammunition on 20 July. The US defence department approved the sale three days later, Kirby said.

In a later incident on Wednesday, Palestinian sources reported that 17 people had been killed and 200 injured in Israeli shelling in the Gaza City neighbourhood of Shujai’iya during a supposed four-hour humanitarian pause.

Israel said Gazan rocket fire also continued. It announced too that three more IDF soldiers had been killed in a booby-trapped building in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, bringing its total military fatalities to 56.

General Sami Turjeman, the head of Israel’s southern command, told Israel Radio that his forces would complete the destruction of cross-border tunnels in Gaza within a few days. “We have killed scores of Hamas’s best fighters,” he said. “With every day that passes we are getting closer to our goal of destroying the tunnels.” Israel’s media and public is focusing narrowly on military operations, casualties and achievements.

In New York, the UN security council met in special session to discuss the Gaza situation at the request of Jordan, but there was little sign of any imminent diplomatic breakthrough. Haaretz reported that Israel was considering drafting a security council resolution containing its terms for ending the war.

Hamas has insisted that the blockade be lifted and prisoners released by Israel as its condition for ending rocket fire across the border. It dismissed Israel’s latest offer of a pause as a PR move, as operations in some areas of Gaza were exempted.

Hopes for progress lie in talks that are expected to take place in Egypt on Thursday involving Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president and chairman of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority, at the head of a united Palestinian delegation.

“A representative from Hamas is part of the official Palestinian delegation and of course that’s a positive step,” said a Cairo-based diplomat. “This is more or less what should have been done from the beginning. If you want something sustainable, you need all sides represented.”

Abbas was reported to have spoken to Khaled Meshaal, the Hamas leader, who is based in Qatar, but there were signs of disagreement about the composition of the delegation and the terms of the talks.

Turkish media reported that Hamas had agreed that the Palestinian Authority would represent it and negotiate on its behalf, but Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman, complained of Egyptian pressure to agree to a ceasefire before any talks took place.

Diplomats said Egypt felt under greater pressure to secure a deal during this round of negotiations in order to maintain its traditional role as broker, despite hostility between Egypt’s president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, and Hamas, which is close to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.

Having previously appeared to rule out easing Gaza’s blockade along its own borders, Egyptian officials have been displaying increased willingness to put the issue on the table – a significant concession that in turn might help convince Hamas to lay down its arms.

“The Egyptians understand that the negotiations have already gone out of Cairo once,” said one informed source. “If they leave Cairo twice, they may not come back again.”

Israel, meanwhile, appeared to be trying to smooth over an ugly spat in its relations with the US. Ron Dermer, its ambassador to Washington, blamed Israel’s “very rambunctious democracy” for attacks on the US secretary of state, John Kerry, distancing Netanyahu from highly critical remarks that were reported in Israeli media.

“This is not coming from the prime minister,” Dermer said, defending what he called a just war in Gaza. “Hamas is no different than al-Qaida … You can imagine what the American people would want their government to do.” He also said 87% of the Israeli people opposed a ceasefire.

Israeli officials expressed anger that Kerry had consulted the foreign ministers of Qatar and Turkey over a Gaza ceasefire on the grounds that both countries are close to Hamas, though both are also close US allies.

“Qatar, financially and politically, diplomatically and through al-Jazeera, is supporting a terrorist group,” an Israeli official told the JTA news agency. “Instead of contributing to the development of the area, they are contributing to terror in the region.”