Israel Closer to Gaza Truce as U.S. Agrees to Help Stop Weapons
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By Calev Ben-David and Bill Varner
Jan. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Israel may be a step closer to ending its 21-day campaign against Hamas after the U.S. agreed to help stop the flow of smuggled weapons into the Gaza Strip.
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, making a joint announcement in Washington with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, called the accord signed with the U.S. on arms smuggling a “vital component to the cessation of hostilities” in Gaza.
U.S. assistance would include technology to ensure Hamas can’t restock its weaponry by land, sea or air, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said, without describing the U.S. offer.
Livni said the agreement would enable Israel to end its operation against Hamas as long as the militant Islamic group halts rocket attacks from Gaza and the two sides complete negotiations in Cairo over steps to shut tunnels under the Egypt- Gaza border that have been used for smuggling. The conflict has claimed the lives of more than 1,100 Palestinians.
An international effort is needed to improve living conditions in Gaza after hostilities end, Rice said. She said Hamas had created “misery” for Palestinians there, and the conflict had led to a “dire” humanitarian situation for residents.
A cease-fire aimed at ending the fighting in the Gaza Strip is “very close,” United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today.
“All the elements are converging,” Ban said after meeting Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in the West Bank city of Ramallah. The “diplomatic track is in high gear” and the conflict may be entering “the final act,” said Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
Civilian Deaths
Talks have intensified as diplomatic pressure has increased on Israel to end its campaign, which began Dec. 27. About half of the dead have been civilians, according to Palestinian hospital officials.
Warplanes today and overnight blasted weapons storage facilities and rocket launch sites used by Hamas, the army said. An Israeli air strike last night killed Interior Minister Said Siam, one of Hamas’s top officials, the army said.
Thirty-seven Palestinians were killed in fighting and airstrikes, Gaza hospital officials said.
Hamas political leader Khalid Mashaal said today the movement won’t agree to end hostilities until Israel withdraws its forces and ends an 18-month blockade of the enclave.
“I don’t need Hamas to sign on a piece of paper,” Livni said on Army Radio earlier this week in discussing efforts to broker a truce. What’s more important, she said, is that when Palestinians fire rockets into Israel, “they know they will be hurt.”
15 Rockets
Israel began its offensive to stop Palestinian militants from firing rockets at its southern towns and cities.
Palestinian militants shot 15 rockets into southern Israel today, injuring five people, the army said. The number of rocket attacks has dropped to an average of 20 a day from more than 70 at the start of the war, the military said.
Defense Ministry official Amos Gilad, who is heading Israel’s negotiating team in Cairo, briefed Olmert and Livni last night on his meetings there yesterday, and it was agreed that he would return to Egypt to “discuss certain details,” Olmert’s office said in an e-mailed statement. Gilad met with Egyptian officials today and is returning to Israel to brief Israeli leaders, Regev said.
“Israel wants a permanent, real quiet,” Regev said. “We don’t want a band-aid that will explode in everyone’s face a month or a year from now.”
Accept in Principle
Hamas officials said Jan. 14 they accepted in principle an Egyptian cease-fire plan with some reservations.
“We are waiting for an answer from Egypt after they talk to” Gilad, Agence France-Presse cited Mussa Abu Marzuk, the deputy head of Hamas’s politburo, as saying in the Syrian capital, Damascus.
Egypt’s truce proposal calls for an “immediate cease-fire with the opening of safe corridors for relief into Gaza” and invites both sides to discuss steps including securing borders and lifting an Israeli economic blockade on Gaza.
The deaths today raised the number of Palestinians killed in the conflict to 1,160, according to Mo’aweya Hassanein, head of emergency medical services in Gaza. Thirteen Israelis have been killed, nine in combat and four from rocket attacks, the army said.
International aid groups have warned of a humanitarian crisis in the impoverished Gaza Strip, where about 1.5 million people live in an area of 360 square kilometers (144 square miles).
Hamas’s Refusal
Hamas, considered a terrorist group by the U.S., Israel and the European Union, refuses to recognize Israel or any peace agreements with the Jewish state. The group took full control of the seaside strip in June 2007 and ended a partnership government with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who leads Fatah. In January 2006, Hamas won parliamentary elections, ousting Fatah.
In the West Bank town of Hebron, a Palestinian teen was shot and killed by Israeli troops in a protest after Friday prayers, hospital officials in Hebron said.
