Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans talks to journalists during his visit to Kharkiv airport as remains of passengers of downed Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 airliner are loaded into a plane (not pictured), in Kharkiv July 25, 2014. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko

By Justyna Pawlak

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - When Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans spoke to his European Union peers of his grief and anger over the downing of a Malaysia Airlines airliner over eastern Ukraine, it was a turning point in Europe's approach to Russia.

Several ministers had tears in their eyes when Timmermans said he had known personally some of the 194 Dutch passengers among the 298 people who died on the plane, which Washington believes pro-Russian separatists shot down in error.

"To my dying day I will not understand that it took so much time for the rescue workers to be allowed to do their difficult job, and that human remains should be used in a political game," Timmermans told the U.N. Security Council hours earlier, before flying overnight to Brussels for the crucial EU session.

Until that meeting on Tuesday, Europe had trailed the United States in imposing economic sanctions to pressure Moscow into working to defuse the eight-month crisis in Ukraine in which hundreds of people have been killed.

Many governments were reluctant to antagonize a major energy supplier. Concern over the cost to Europe's convalescent economy of fraying the vast network of industrial and business links with Russia also weighed heavily.

Intense lobbying by Washington, including a warning by President Barack Obama that the plane downing should be "a wake up call for Europe", had done little to change that mentality.

But like a supportive family, EU partners rallied around the bereaved Dutch, putting national economic interests aside and for the first time going beyond asset freezes and visa bans on individuals to envisage curbs on entire sectors of the Russian economy that could turn the screw on President Vladimir Putin.

Gruesome images of bodies strewn across fields after the downing of flight MH17 appear to have persuaded some of the opponents of sanctions to take a more decisive, if painful, stand against Russian detribalization of Ukraine.

Within days of Timmermans' address, senior EU diplomats had agreed the broad outlines of potential sanctions on Russian access to EU capital markets, defense and energy technology.

Final decisions await more deliberations next week - but diplomats said on Friday an initial package was now virtually a done deal.

"It is fair to say we are heading in the direction," one EU diplomat told Reuters.

In the run up to Friday's discussions, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte had a series of phone calls with his EU counterparts, near daily calls with Obama and six conversations with Putin.

"We want, as a country that has acquired a certain moral obligation as a result of this tragedy, to promote Europe taking a common line on this," Rutte told parliament in The Hague.

The Dutch are a trading nation with outsized commercial ties to Russia and are often reluctant to let politics get in the way of a good deal. But an opinion poll this week found 78 percent back economic sanctions even if it hurts their own economy.

LAST STRAW

Poland's Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, long an advocate of harsher sanctions, said the plane crash was the "last straw that broke the camel's back".

"The behavior of the separatists ... the scandalous plundering of the luggage and the bodies themselves - all this made an enormous impression on the Netherlands ... and on all of us," he told reporters after Tuesday's meeting.

The EU turnaround became possible when key players shifted their positions. Timmermans' impassioned speech, several diplomats said, made it difficult for others to hold a firm line against sanctions at Tuesday's meeting.

"The Dutch minister gave a very effective, emotional lead... saying we have got to move on beyond just naming individuals. No one found it possible to speak against that," one senior European diplomat said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who felt personally misled by Putin after months of intense dialogue, joined the drive for broader measures against Moscow even before the plane crash. Berlin has by far the biggest trade with Russia.

After the downing of the airliner, Britain too agreed to restrictions on Russian access to capital markets largely based in its City of London financial center which it had previously resisted.

German government sources said Berlin, which had been hesitant on sanctions for months, demanded that senior EU diplomats meet as soon as last Monday to work out a more effective sanctions package. To their annoyance, a holiday at EU headquarters for Belgium's national day got in the way.

EU leaders had agreed at a July 16 summit that more Russian people and companies should be targeted with asset freezes by the end of the month but that was suddenly not enough.

"It is true that the European Council had set a deadline of the end of the month, but after the plane crash everybody should have understood the situation was far more urgent", one Berlin source said. "We were losing time when time was precious."

ITALY CHANGES TONE

Another notable change of tone came from Italy, which along with Germany is the biggest consumer of Russian gas in Europe.

Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini, who had drawn criticism for making her first visit in the EU's rotating president to Moscow at the start of July, now said repeatedly she wanted to see additional sanctions imposed on Russia.

"The Malaysian air disaster weighed heavily on everyone," an Italian source said. "Timmermans spoke for half an hour. It was a very emotional speech where he described the pain and anger of the Dutch. An airplane with 300 people in it was shot down and that changed everything."

Some diplomats suggested Mogherini's change of tone might have more to do with her push to become the next EU foreign policy chief after Catherine Ashton's mandate ends in October. Several central European leaders expressed opposition to her at the summit because of her emollience towards Russia.

Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite summed up their mood by saying she would not back a "pro-Kremlin" candidate.

The final shape of the sanctions package may hinge on a tug of war between Britain and France over who bears the brunt of economic pain of such decisions.

Diplomats said the French dug their heels in after British Prime Minister David Cameron publicly criticized Paris' decision to deliver the first of two Mistral helicopter carriers it is building for Moscow under a 2011 contract.

"The estimates are that in the current package the pain for the UK would probably be greater than for anyone else," said one senior diplomat, referring to the potential damage to London's City banks if financial restrictions are imposed.

Recognizing the shift, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, Anthony Gardner, said his impression was the mood towards Russia had changed this week.

"Our impression is that several countries now believe that the choice that they thought was on the table of taking the bitter medicine today and not taking the bitter medicine tomorrow was a false choice," he told reporters.

"That choice never existed. Now the choice is either taking the bitter medicine today or taking an even more bitter medicine tomorrow."

(Additional reporting by Paul Taylor in Paris, Adrian Croft, Jan Strupczewski and Martin Santa in Brussels, Thomas Escritt in Amsterdam, Andreas Rinke in Berlin and Steven Scherer in Rome; Editing by Paul Taylor)

Dutch minister's grief toughens EU toward Russia

When Frans Timmermans spoke to his European Union peers about his anguish, it was a turning point.
Some with tears in their eyes

MOSCOW (AP) -- Having for months dismissed Western sanctions on Russia as toothless, business leaders here are now afraid that the downing of the Malaysian jetliner will bring about an international isolation that will cause serious and lasting economic damage.

Throughout the Ukrainian crisis, U.S. and European sanctions had mainly targeted a handful of individuals, sparing economic ties. Then last week the U.S. imposed penalties on some of Russia's largest corporations. And when the airliner was shot down just a day later in Ukraine, allegedly by separatists with Moscow's support, concern grew in Russia that the sanctions would only get worse as President Vladimir Putin shows little sign of cooperation.

Reinforcing those concerns, the European Union said Friday it is planning newer, tougher penalties on businesses.

"Over the past few months, there was a sense that Mr. Putin acted decisively, forcefully, and correctly, and that everybody else in the world would accommodate themselves to that reality and we'd get back to something like business as usual," said Bernard Sucher, a Moscow-based entrepreneur and board member of Aton, an independent investment bank. "Now we're talking about real fear."

It's not clear how quickly that fear and the country's overall economic pain might soften Putin's foreign policies. He keeps tight control over business leaders and still enjoys a high popularity rating. But some analysts note the fear of tougher sanctions may in fact already be having an impact, for example by keeping Russia from trying to annex eastern Ukraine the way it did with Crimea in March.

After that move, which triggered a deep freeze in relations with the West, stock markets in Russia dropped only to later rebound as investors understood the country's trade relations would remain largely unscathed. Europe, which is in frail economic health, dared not block energy imports from Russia or the trade in goods such as cars. Oil companies like BP and ExxonMobil continued their operations in Russia, with some even signing new deals.

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The convoy of hearses with the remains of the victims of Malaysia Airlines MH17 downed over rebel-he …

The U.S. took a tougher stance, but until last week was also careful to limit sanctions to asset freezes on individuals who were perceived to have had a hand in destabilizing Ukraine.

On July 16, the night before the Malaysia Airlines jet was shot down, Russian markets appeared to have fully recovered, with the MICEX stock index adding 23 percent since March 1.

Then last week, the U.S. announced new sanctions that had investors in Russia fear a turn for the worse. The U.S. shut off its financial markets for a broad swath of defense companies as well as Russia's largest oil company, Rosneft, gas producer Novatek, which is half-owned by a close Putin ally, and a major bank, VEB. The move offered business executives a glimpse of what they had thought would never happen: serious international isolation.

According to Alexis Rodzianko, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia, those sanctions were the first to really pack a punch because they were "broader and more specific: they went beyond the symbolic."

Rodzianko said anecdotal evidence suggests some investment decisions were delayed, "particularly when people were just considering coming in to the market."

EU corporate leaders talk sanctionsPlay Video

When the Malaysian airliner went down one day later, investors worried conditions would deteriorate further.

The stock market has fallen over 6 percent since Thursday last week. Investors keep pulling money out of the country. They withdrew $74.6 billion in the first six months of the year, a figure forecast to reach $100 billion for the whole of 2014 — almost twice the $60 billion in withdrawals seen last year.

Growth, meanwhile, is nose-diving. The International Monetary Fund this week slashed its forecast for 2014 from 1.3 percent to 0.2 percent. And the currency is unstable — Russia's central bank on Friday raised its key interest rate by half a point to 8 percent, saying the heightened geopolitical risks are putting pressure on the ruble.

Even the world of sports has been drawn in. FIFA, the governing body for world soccer, faced calls from German lawmakers to move the 2018 World Cup from Russia, but swiftly rejected the notion.

EU countries, meanwhile, are stepping up the pressure. On Friday they reached a preliminary agreement to follow the U.S. in sanctioning businesses. Officials said the deal, which has yet to be finalized, would limit trade in key sectors like defense and technology. It would also restrict access to European capital markets for Russian state-owned financial groups. Last year alone, 47 percent — or 7.5 billion euros ($10.2 billion) — of all the bonds issued by such institutions came from EU markets.

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FILE - In this Monday, July 21, 2014 pool file photo Russian President Vladimir Putin listens durin …

Despite all this, there is little public criticism in Russia — none at all from those with the most at stake, the oligarchs.

Russia's biggest companies denied comment for this story. One spokesman said he was not authorized even to say a "no comment" for an article about sanctions.

A person who had close ties to the government until last year told The Associated Press that it is "too risky to express concerns in public and even in closed-door meetings with Putin." The person, who spoke only on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, said tycoons usually express their concerns to government officials who in turn communicate them to the president.

That silence has been a hallmark of Putin's rule. In the early 2000s, he forged a deal with Russian businessmen in which the Kremlin offered its protection for the often murky deals that created the oligarchs' fortunes. In return, the tycoons promised to not meddle in government policy. The only man who broke this rule — Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man — was punished with two sets of charges and spent 10 years in prison before he was pardoned by Putin a month before the showcase Winter Olympics held in Russia.

In public, Putin appears unfazed by the sanctions. In a speech Tuesday, he suggested Russia should accept to sacrifice economic growth for the sake of foreign-policy objectives — a nightmare scenario for a business leader hoping to tap global markets.

Ukraine Crisis ExplainedPlay Video

But analysts note that for all his belligerent rhetoric, the Russian leader has softened on some fronts in Ukraine.

Though the first sanctions, which targeted Putin's billionaire friends, were perceived as a failure, they did work in the sense that Russia did not annex any other parts of Ukraine the way it did with Crimea, says Sergei Guriev, a prominent Russian economist now working at Sciences Po university in Paris. They also "forced the Russian government to recognize Ukrainian elections," he said.

It is unclear how long it would take for the latest sanctions' effects to trickle down and affect the wallets of ordinary Russians, who have basked in the prosperity that has characterized the Putin era and that is a key part of his high support.

Putin's support among the electorate has been as high as 80 percent this year, driven in part by a wave of chauvinism after Russia's annexation of Crimea. Serious economic contraction could pare down his approval rating, though it's likely to remain strong.

"The crisis within and over Ukraine will continue even as a vast majority of the Russian people will continue to support President Putin, and will see the United States as an adversary, even an enemy of Russia," Dmitry Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow center, wrote in a commentary this week.

'Meaningful' EU phase 3 sanctions ahead?Play Video

Putin seems to be in a balancing act, seeing how far he can pursue his geopolitical interest in Ukraine without getting hit too hard by sanctions. But the U.S. and EU's level of tolerance seems to have dropped since the Malaysian plane's downing, increasing the risk of further damaging sanctions on Russia's economy.

Russia's former long-time finance minister Alexei Kudrin blames a part of the Kremlin's elite for seeking to isolate the country internationally.

"Business wants development, wants to invest, build new factories, trade," Kudrin said in a recent interview with the Itar-TASS news agency. "And businesses are really worried about what they hear on radio and television."

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Jim Heintz in Moscow and John-Thor Dahlburg in Brussels contributed to this report.

'We're talking about real fear' over MH17 fallout

CAIRO (AP) — The third Gaza war is playing out much like the first one more than five years ago: The harrowing civilian toll in Gaza is now at the center of the discourse, eclipsing the rocket attacks by Hamas militants that were the stated reason for the Israeli assault.

Then as now, a question persists: Beyond the carnage, are Israel's airstrikes against civilian locations achieving anything at all?

It ended messily for Israel in 2009. A U.N. commission investigated, Israel refused to cooperate, and the resulting report — since then partly disavowed by its own author, former South African judge Richard Goldstone — said Israel deliberately targeted civilians and might have committed war crimes, along with Hamas.

About 1,400 Palestinians, including many hundreds of civilians, were killed in the operation dubbed "Cast Lead," along with 13 Israelis. After 18 days this year, the civilian death toll of operation "Protective Edge" is at similar levels — and the proportion is higher. Israel's argument is similar as well: Hamas is to blame not only for attacking a much-stronger power with rockets, but also for operating from within heavily populated residential areas, as well as mosques, hospitals and schools.

Navi Pillay, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said Wednesday that some of the recent Israeli attacks, including those on homes and on a care center for the disabled, raise "a strong possibility that international law has been violated in a manner that could amount to war crimes."

She also condemned indiscriminate Hamas attacks — including 3,000 rockets fired since July 8 that have killed several civilians in Israel — and said storing military equipment in civilian areas or launching attacks from there is unacceptable. But "the actions of one party do not absolve the other party of the need to respect its obligations under international law," she added.

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FILE - In this Dec. 20, 2008, file photo, masked Palestinian militants from Islamic Jihad place home …

International law can be a fuzzy and subjective thing, its application dependent on circumstances. The wider context also affects the degree of political pressure on Israel to stop. So it is important to note that there are also key differences between now and 2009. Here's a comparative look:

THE ROCKETS HAVE MORE RANGE

It is hard for outsiders to grasp the meaning, to Israelis, of Tel Aviv. The seaside metropolis of about 2 million is prosperous and fun, and an easy, generally liberal atmosphere prevails. It is a place of high tech, of electric nightlife, of diverse and highly Westernized culture, of surfing and gay pride parades. It is essential to an often unspoken but profound feeling that many Israelis cling to, which oddly aligns with what Arab critics would say: That they somehow do not belong in the Middle East.

In 2009, Hamas was firing relatively small projectiles with minimal range, mostly aimed at border communities surrounding the blockaded Gaza Strip. These are gritty places: hardscrabble towns that are relatively poor; or kibbutz farming communities whose people are often idealistic and pioneering. The people under fire there were certainly displeased, but by and large had no illusions about where they live.

Now Hamas is firing at Tel Aviv, which is 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of the strip, and even at some cities beyond. One landed near Tel Aviv's airport, causing U.S. and European airlines to suspend flights. Millions are living with the threat of rockets every day. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can go on TV and ask Americans what they would do if New York or Chicago were under constant rocket attack. The argument resonates, the world seems to be listening, and even many in the Arab world agree. So Israel gets more room to maneuver.

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FILE - In this Tuesday, July 22, 2014, file photo, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks …

IT'S NOT THE SAME HAMAS

Hamas rode relatively high in 2009, in its own particular way.

The Islamic militant group had legitimately won Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006, was denied the share of power it wanted by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, and in a little over a year had battled its way to full control of Gaza. It promised cleaner government than the Palestinian Authority and was relatively popular as a result. Israelis and much of the world, remembering suicide bombings and bus attacks, rejected Hamas as a terrorist group, to be blockaded and shunned. But in the Arab world at least, there was a veneer of legitimacy. Hamas had powerful supporters in Iran and the Gulf, and neighboring Egypt was not openly an enemy back then.

Much has happened since in the Arab world, and it hasn't helped Hamas. The Arab Spring brought a wave of Islamist successes, following by a widespread sense of their misrule. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood, which largely spawned Hamas, is now outlawed; its leaders are on trial and the group is portrayed by media as terrorists. Jihadis cut from a similar cloth as Hamas are considered in leading Arab circles to have brought destruction and disgrace in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Egypt's own Sinai region.

There is not much love for Israel in the Arab world, and growing horror at the civilian deaths in Gaza. But many in the region seem nonetheless pleased to see Hamas get hammered, and some would be happier still to see it gone. The Obama administration seems more involved in the region than that of President George W. Bush in its final days: Secretary of State John Kerry and other international negotiators are scrambling around the Middle East, but genuine pressure seems lacking. More maneuvering room for Israel.

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FILE - In this Sunday, Dec. 21, 2008, file photo, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert attends the wee …

NETANYAHU IS NO OLMERT

There are two kinds of governments in Israel when it comes to the heart of the matter, which is peace with the Palestinians and the possibility of a Palestinian state.

One kind was in power during "Cast Lead." Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was clearly committed to pulling out of the West Bank one way or another and was making rather far-reaching offers to Abbas: a state in all of Gaza and the vast majority of the West Bank, and a share in Jerusalem. For a variety of reasons no deal was struck, but Olmert was perceived as serious on the Palestinian issue. This opens doors and spreads positivity, and Israel enjoyed some space as a result.

It's a very different story under Netanyahu. He dropped his lifelong opposition to a Palestinian state in recent years — but his terms are very far from those of the Palestinians. Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank is roaring ahead, and nine months of peace talks got scarcely beyond quibbles and procedure. Netanyahu's own party continues to oppose a Palestinian state, and there is a sense of a wink about his moves in this regard. And so the region and the world view him with considerable suspicion. If he were fighting anyone but Hamas, the atmosphere for Israel would be most uncomfortable by now.

A SENSE OF PREDICTABLE FUTILITY

During the 2008-9 campaign, it was not exactly clear what the outcome would be. Would Hamas break under the assault? Would the people of Gaza blame Hamas for their suffering and overthrow the group? Is victory possible? It was not even clear whether Israel ruled out reoccupying the strip, from which it had withdrawn four years earlier.

The answers to those questions are clearer now. In both campaigns, as well as another one in late 2012, Hamas has shown that it will simply continue firing rockets no matter what the outcome to the people of Gaza. Hamas does not seem on the verge of being overthrown despite its heavy-handed rule. And the people actually support Hamas' stated goal of ending the Israeli-Egyptian blockade so much that there seems to be scant pressure on Hamas to give in. On the Israeli side, there is minimal desire to retake the inhospitable strip.

It's also clear that Israel's various efforts to minimize the deaths with a variety of warnings aren't working well. For the third time, the world sees images of whole families buried under rubble, of children in a morgue. And for all its claims of precision, Israel's military is having trouble producing detailed explanations of why any particular building was hit.

It lends a sense of predictable futility to the proceedings, and raises questions in Israel itself about the strategy. The answer tends to be that doing nothing in response to rocket fire on cities is not an option. That logic dominates the Israeli discourse for now. But to many, it is starting to feel uncomfortable nonetheless.

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Dan Perry has covered the Middle East since the 1990s and currently leads Associated Press' text coverage in the region. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/perry_dan.

New twists in conflict between Israel, Hamas

The bloodshed in Gaza is playing out much like that of five years ago, with some key differences.
Possible war crimes committed

Global protests against Israel's Gaza actions

From New York City to Bangkok, demonstrators rally against the military campaign in the Palestinian territory.
Photo gallery

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel-Hamas fighting looked headed for escalation after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry failed Friday to broker a weeklong truce as a first step toward a broader deal and Israel's defense minister warned Israel might soon expand its Gaza ground operation "significantly."

Hours after the U.S.-led efforts stalled, the two sides agreed to a 12-hour humanitarian cease-fire to begin Saturday. However, the temporary lull was unlikely to change the trajectory of the current hostilities amid ominous signs that the Gaza war is spilling over into the West Bank.

In a "Day of Rage," Palestinians across the territory, which had been relatively calm for years, staged protests against Israel's Gaza operation and the rising casualty toll there. In the West Bank, at least six Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire, hospital officials said.

The latest diplomatic setbacks, after several days of high-level diplomacy in the region, signaled that both sides are digging in and that the fighting in Gaza is likely to drag on.

Israel wants more time to destroy Hamas military tunnels and rocket launching sites in Gaza, while the territory's Hamas rulers want international guarantees that a Gaza border blockade will be lifted before they cease fire.

The Israeli military said in a statement that Saturday's 12-hour pause in fighting would start at 8 a.m. But it warned that the military "shall respond if terrorists choose to exploit" the lull to attack Israeli troops "or fire at Israeli civilians." The military also said that "operational activities to locate and neutralize tunnels in the Gaza Strip will continue."

Israel Mulls Ceasefire Amid Gaza OffensivePlay Video

A Hamas spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri, said earlier Friday that the group had agreed to the 12-hour lull, intended to allow civilians to receive aid and evacuate to safer areas.

Civilians on both sides have been hardest hit over the past 18 days.

In Gaza, Israeli airstrikes and tank shelling have killed more than 860 Palestinians, wounded more than 5,700, displaced tens of thousands and destroyed hundreds of homes, Palestinian officials said. In dozens of cases, Israeli attacks killed three or more members of the same family, according to U.N. figures, and civilians make up three-quarters of the dead.

Gaza militants have fired close to 2,500 rockets at Israel since July 8, exposing most of Israel's population to an indiscriminate threat that has killed three civilians. Thirty-six soldiers have also been killed in battle in Gaza.

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said Friday that Israel's military would continue to strike Hamas hard, in order to deter it from firing rockets at Israel in the future.

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Two and a half-year-old Muhammad Al Masri rests on his mother's legs in a classroom at a United …

"At the end of the operation, Hamas will have to think very hard if it is worth it to taunt us in the future," Yaalon was quoted as telling soldiers manning an Iron Dome anti-missile battery. "You need to be ready for the possibility that very soon we will order the military to significantly broaden ground activity in Gaza."

"Hamas is paying a very heavy price and will pay an even heavier price," he said, according to a statement by his office.

The warning came shortly after Kerry announced in Cairo that he had been unable to broker a weeklong truce during which both sides were to talk about security arrangements and a possible easing of Gaza's border blockade.

For days, Kerry had been moving between the Egyptian capital, the West Bank and Jerusalem, and talking to officials from Qatar, who are in contact with Hamas. More meetings with his counterparts from European Union nations, Turkey and Qatar were scheduled for Saturday in France.

Speaking alongside U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon and the Egyptian foreign minister, Kerry insisted there was a general agreement on the "concept" of a truce but that both sides had concerns over details of carrying it out.

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A painting depicting Palestinian rural life decorates a United Nations school where hundreds of fami …

"Gaps have been significantly narrowed," he said. "It can be achieved, if we work through some of the issues that are important for the parties."

However, the Israeli Security Cabinet rejected Kerry's proposal, according to Israeli media reports. Israel wants to be able to continue destroying tunnels used by Hamas militants to try to infiltrate into Israel and to smuggle weapons. It has so far uncovered 31 tunnels and destroyed half of them.

Meanwhile, heavy Israeli shelling was reported in the town of Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip, an area where ground troops are operating.

One shell hit near the emergency department of Beit Hanoun hospital, wounding six people, including a foreign national who was not identified further, the Red Crescent said. Two of the wounded were in critical condition.

Shells also hit an ambulance in Beit Hanoun, killing a paramedic and wounding two people, the Red Crescent said. Another ambulance driver was killed as he tried to evacuate wounded from the southern town of Bani Suheila, the organization said.

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Smoke from an Israeli strike rises over the Gaza Strip, Friday, July 25, 2014. An Israeli defense of …

As the Gaza fighting dragged on, the West Bank was becoming increasingly restive, with protests erupting Friday across the territory.

In the northern village of Hawara, hundreds took part in a protest after emerging from a mosque after Friday prayers, said Mayor Mouin Idmeidi. Hawara is located along a main north-south thoroughfare that is also used by Israeli motorists, and one Israeli driver slowed down as he passed the march and fired at the group, the mayor said.

He said four people were wounded and that one of them, a 19-year-old, died at Rafidiyeh Hospital in Nablus of his injuries.

After the shooting, clashes erupted between Palestinians and Israeli troops who opened fire, killing a 22-year-old, Idmeidi said. Health workers at the hospital confirmed the deaths.

An Israeli police spokesman, Mickey Rosenfeld, said paramilitary border police opened fire to disperse violent protests at Hawara, and that masked Palestinians threw firebombs. He said he was unaware of a shooting involving an Israeli civilian.

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Palestinian boys stand next to wall with murals and Arabic writing that reads "Tiba standard nursery …

In Beit Omar, clashes erupted between Israeli forces and Palestinian stone-throwers. Hebron hospital officials said three Palestinians were killed.

Later Friday, the Israeli military said a soldier opened fire and killed a Palestinian protester who attempted to snatch his weapon during clashes in a refugee camp near the city of Hebron. Palestinian police said the man was killed after scuffling with a soldier who had barred him from entering his home before the break of the Ramadan fast.

On Thursday, thousands of Palestinians clashes with Israeli forces at a West Bank checkpoint and in east Jerusalem, the largest protests in those areas in several years.

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Associated Press writers Mohammed Daraghmeh in the West Bank, Yousur Alhlou in Jerusalem and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.