Israel dismissed yesterday a Hamas proposal for a six-month Gaza Strip truce during which an embargo on the territory would be lifted, saying the Palestinian Islamists wanted to prepare for more fighting rather than peace.
The Hamas offer, issued on Thursday following talks with Egyptian mediators, departed from previous demands by the group that any ceasefire apply simultaneously in Gaza and the occupied West Bank — the territories where Palestinians want statehood.
Hamas said Egypt would raise the truce idea with Israel next week and that it expected a more binding Israeli decision then.
PHOTO: EPA
Israel has been reluctant to enter into any formal agreement that could shore up Hamas against their West Bank-based rival, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, as he pursues US-sponsored peace talks with the Jewish state.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert signaled flexibility last month by saying attacks on Gaza would cease if its Hamas rulers stopped cross-border rocket salvoes.
“Israel is interested in peace. Unfortunately, Hamas is playing games. Hamas is biding time in order to rearm and regroup,” David Baker, an Olmert spokesman, said.
“Israel will continue to act to protect its citizens,” Baker said. “There would be no need for Israel’s defensive actions if Hamas would cease and desist from committing terrorist attacks.”
In fresh violence, a Palestinian gunman killed two Israeli guards near the West Bank boundary in an attack claimed by Hamas and the Islamic Jihad group. Islamic Jihad also fired four rockets into Israel from Gaza, causing no casualties.
Hamas was unfazed by Baker’s comments, saying that an Egyptian mediator, Omar Suleiman, would visit Israel next week to take up the Gaza truce idea with Olmert.
“We will then get the Israeli response,” Hamas official Mahmoud al-Zahar told reporters on returning to Gaza from Egypt.
Sources in Olmert’s office and the Israeli Defense Ministry said they had no knowledge of a visit by Suleiman next week.
Meanwhile, the UN called yesterday on Israel and Hamas to find a solution to the fuel crisis in the Gaza Strip, saying the former had to restore supplies to the salient and the latter had to ensure it was properly distributed.
The UN said it had stopped delivering food aid to hundreds of thousands of people in the Gaza Strip and would be unable to make regular food deliveries until it received more fuel.
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