Hamas official: Gaza militants agree to cease-fire

AMY TEIBEL

Asso­ci­ated Press

JERUSALEM — Gaza mil­i­tants agreed to a cease-fire with Israel to stop three days of vio­lence, a Hamas offi­cial said Sun­day, after a deadly attack on Israelis near the Egypt-Israel bor­der set off a round of Israeli airstrikes and rocket bar­rages from Gaza.

The sud­den flareup also threat­ened Israel-Egypt rela­tions, after Egypt said five of its police­men were killed by Israeli fire as Israel’s troops and air­craft pur­sued the mil­i­tants respon­si­ble for killing eight peo­ple Thurs­day. Egypt com­plained strongly as thou­sands demon­strated in Cairo, and Israel apologized.

The senior Hamas offi­cial said Sun­day after­noon that mil­i­tant groups in Gaza agreed that the truce would go into effect Sun­day evening. Hamas secu­rity per­son­nel would enforce the agree­ment bro­kered by Egypt, the offi­cial said. He said Egypt told the groups that Israel would agree to halt its airstrikes only if the Pales­tini­ans stopped the rocket fire first.

A spokesman for Israel’s gov­ern­ment would not com­ment, and it was not clear if the cease-fire indeed had the back­ing of all of Gaza’s armed factions.

Pales­tin­ian rocket fire and Israeli airstrikes con­tin­ued hours after the cease-fire was to take effect at 9 p.m. local time.

Ear­lier Sun­day, a salvo of rock­ets from Gaza struck an empty school and sent thou­sands of Israelis into bomb shel­ters. Israel responded with airstrikes and diplo­mats scram­bled to limit the violence.

The diplo­matic efforts were also aimed at lim­it­ing the dam­age from the deaths of the Egypt­ian police­men. On Sun­day morn­ing, an Israeli envoy arrived at Cairo’s inter­na­tional air­port and was whisked off in a con­voy of four wait­ing cars, air­port offi­cials said. Israel’s gov­ern­ment would not com­ment on the envoy’s iden­tity or the details of his mis­sion. A sec­ond uniden­ti­fied envoy arrived later Sun­day, the Egypt­ian offi­cials said. France and Ger­many were also work­ing with the Israelis and Egyp­tians to end the diplo­matic spat, the offi­cials said, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymity in order to dis­cuss ongo­ing diplo­matic efforts.

U.S. Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of State Jef­frey Felt­man also arrived to help medi­ate, accord­ing to an offi­cial at the Amer­i­can Embassy in Cairo, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymity because he was not autho­rized to speak to reporters.

Along­side the diplo­macy, Israel threat­ened to inten­sify its attacks if the rocket bar­rages continue.

Speak­ing to Israel Radio, mil­i­tary spokesman Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai said Israel “will not hes­i­tate” to widen its mil­i­tary oper­a­tion if nec­es­sary. Diplo­mats scram­bled to try to pre­vent the vio­lence — the dead­liest since Israel went to war against Gaza mil­i­tants 2 1/2 years ago — from spi­ral­ing out of control.

Large-scale Israeli mil­i­tary oper­a­tions in Gaza would cre­ate new fric­tion with the Mus­lim world at a time when Pales­tin­ian Pres­i­dent Mah­moud Abbas is prepar­ing to ask the United Nations to rec­og­nize an inde­pen­dent Pales­tin­ian state. Pic­tures of a major Israeli offen­sive in Gaza could hurt the Jew­ish state’s efforts to min­i­mize world sup­port for the Pales­tin­ian state­hood bid.

A spokesman said Abbas’ Pales­tin­ian Author­ity planned to use the renewed vio­lence to bol­ster its case for state­hood at the United Nations next month.

“An inde­pen­dent Pales­tin­ian state is the rem­edy for vio­lence,” Husam Zom­lot said. “It would con­trol its bor­ders and pre­vent such dete­ri­o­ra­tion from happening.”

Abbas, who wields lim­ited power in the West Bank under Israel’s over­all secu­rity con­trol, asserts no such con­trol at this time. Hamas routed his loy­al­ists from Gaza in a vio­lent 2007 takeover, and a rec­on­cil­i­a­tion pact the two sides signed in May has stalled.

Hamas, backed by Iran, opposes both peace­mak­ing with Israel and Abbas’ state­hood bid.

Under Hamas rule, Gaza’s mil­i­tants have increased the qual­ity and range of their rocket arse­nals and now tar­get the largest city in Israel’s south — Beer­sheba, 25 miles away from Gaza. Most of the rock­ets launched since Thurs­day have been military-grade Katyushas smug­gled in through tun­nels from Egypt.

Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005.

Since Thursday’s ambush, mil­i­tants have fired some 100 rock­ets and mor­tars into Israel. On Sat­ur­day, rock­ets killed an Israeli man in Beer­sheba and seri­ously wounded two others.

Asso­ci­ated Press writ­ers Mohammed Daragh­meh in Ramal­lah, West Bank, Rizek Abdel Jawad in Gaza City, Gaza Strip, and Aya Batrawy in Cairo, Egypt, con­tributed to this report.

Posted by AP News on Aug 21 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.