WORLD / Middle East
Israeli military leave coast, attacks from Gaza continue
(AP)
Updated: 2006-11-26 15:12
JERUSALEM -- A truce meant to end five months of deadly
Israeli-Palestinian clashes took hold in the Gaza Strip early Sunday, but
early violations by Palestinian militants tempered hopes the accord would
help to coax moribund peace talks back to life.
The Israeli military said all troops were withdrawn from Gaza in the
hours before the 6 a.m. cease-fire, announced late Saturday, went into
effect. Dozens of tanks and armored vehicles were parked just over the
border in a military staging ground in southern Israel early Sunday, and
the streets of northern Gaza were empty.
But occasional rocket and mortar fire from Gaza continued to strike
Israel within the truce's first hour.
"Let's hope that's just the problems of the beginning," Israeli
government spokeswoman Miri Eisin said. "But if Israel is attacked, we
will respond. If there are Palestinian factions that are not part of the
cease-fire, it's hard to see how the cease-fire will hold."
All militant factions denied involvement in the attacks.
A spokesman for the Palestinian government, Ghazi Hamad, said all armed
groups have committed to the agreement, and termed any violations rogue
acts.
"There is 100 percent effort to make this work, but there is no guarantee
of 100 percent results," Hamad said.
The truce agreement, if it holds, will be a coup for Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas as he tries to form a more moderate government
than the one currently led by Islamic Hamas radicals, who refuse to
recognize Israel. Abbas, a moderate from the Fatah Party elected
separately last year, hopes a new government lineup will persuade the
West to end crushing economic sanctions imposed after Hamas took power in
March.
The cease-fire was meant to halt both rocket fire and other militant
attacks on Israel from Gaza, and a military offensive Israel launched in
the coastal strip in June, less than a year after ending its 38-year
occupation.
The two sides announced the accord after Abbas telephoned Israeli Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert late Saturday to tell him he wrested an agreement
from Palestinian factions to stop rocket fire and all other violence from
Gaza. Olmert reciprocated by pledging to stop all Israeli military
operations in Gaza and withdraw all troops there.
Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rdeneh said a truce reached in Egypt in
February 2005 would be revived.
"There is a signed agreement between the president and Prime Minister
(Ismail) Haniyeh and all the Palestinian factions to resort to the
agreement of the factions in Cairo in 2005, including ceasing all the
military activity from Gaza, starting from Sunday morning," Abu Rdeneh
said from Gaza City. "The Israeli prime minister has agreed, and it is
going to start tomorrow morning."
Abbas told Olmert that the factions had agreed to stop all violence from
Gaza, including rocket fire and suicide bombings, starting at 6 a.m.
Sunday, Eisin said.
He "asked that, in response, Israel stop all military operations in the
Gaza Strip and withdraw all her forces," and Olmert responded favorably,
she said.
Israeli forces originally entered Gaza to try to recover a soldier
Hamas-linked militants captured in a June 25 cross-border raid. But they
soon widened their objectives to target militants who had intensified
their rocket attacks on southern Israel after the September 2005 Gaza
pullout.
The violence claimed the lives of more than 300 Palestinians and five
Israelis. Most of the dead Palestinians were militants, but dozens of
civilians died, too, including 19 members of an extended family killed
earlier this month.
Despite international criticism over Palestinian civilian deaths, Olmert
pledged to continue the offensive until Palestinian rocket attacks from
Gaza significantly decreased. Instead, as the fighting swelled, rocket
fire in November more than doubled from October, killing two Israeli
civilians in a single week.
The militants' capture of Cpl. Gilad Shalit, who remains in captivity,
and the subsequent Israeli incursion into Gaza cut short efforts by
Olmert and Abbas to restart peace talks that broke down six years ago. A
truce could help to create the momentum to get talks moving.
"We welcome the announcement and see this as a positive step forward,"
White House spokesman Alex Conant said Saturday evening in Washington.
"We hope it leads to less violence for the Israeli and Palestinian
people."
Although Israel has no ties with the Hamas government, which rejects the
Jewish state's right to exist, it considers the separately elected Abbas
an acceptable negotiating partner. He and Olmert agreed months ago to
meet, but Abbas has balked at setting a date without receiving assurances
the meeting would yield real dividends for him, like a release of
Palestinian prisoners Israel holds.
Olmert has said no prisoners would be released to Hamas before Shalit is
freed.
A cease-fire in Gaza is part of a broad package Abbas is trying to put
together in the hope of restoring hundreds of millions of dollars in
funding Western powers cut off to pressure Hamas to recognize Israel and
renounce violence.
The centerpiece of that package would be the formation of a new
government less inimical to Israel. Another major element is a prisoner
swap.
Hamas' supreme leader, Khaled Mashaal, arrived in Cairo this week to
discuss both issues with Egytian mediators, but there was no word of a
breakthrough.
On Saturday, Mashaal said his group was willing to give peace
negotiations with Israel six months to reach an agreement for a
Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank, but threatened a new armed
uprising if the talks failed.
The double-edged comments were his strongest confirmation that the
Islamic militant group would allow Abbas to try to negotiate with Israel.
But it was also the first time he has set a deadline with an explicit
threat of a new uprising.
Israel had no immediate comment on Mashaal's proposal.
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