GAZA, 10 July 2003 — The main Palestinian militant group Hamas said yesterday a cease-fire declared under intense international pressure to further a road map to peace would unravel if Israel did not free thousands of prisoners. The US-engineered peace plan is coming under threat from discontent within the mainstream Palestinian movement Fatah over Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas’ perceived failure to win Israeli gestures reciprocating for the truce.
But Abbas denied yesterday reports that he was considering resigning. The truce declared by major Palestinian factions on June 29 has been rattled by violence, including Israel’s killing of a Palestinian man in West Bank raid yesterday and a Palestinian suicide bombing that killed an Israeli on Monday.
Monday’s bombing was the first such attack since the truce was called, and Hamas’ founder and spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, said that while his group remained committed to the pact, militants could not abide by it unless jailed comrades were freed. “Our patience has its limits. Israeli practices (including) the issue of the prisoners, are a red line that can never be bypassed in any way or form,” Yassin said after talks with Egyptian security officials trying to shore up the truce.
Israel has said it would free hundreds of Palestinians but set tough conditions which included ruling out the release of militants allegedly involved in a campaign of suicide bombings and ambush attacks. That would effectively exclude most of up to 8,000 arrested since an uprising for independence began in September 2000.
The Israeli government dismissed conditions set by activist groups, saying it would deal only with Abbas’ Palestinian Authority, but it has freed some prisoners and withdrawn some forces in Gaza and the West Bank.
Some local cells have refused to abide by the truce proclamation, citing the prisoner issue among others, and a suicide bomber dispatched by a cell of Islamic Jihad based in the West Bank town of Jenin killed an Israeli woman on Monday.
Israeli military sources said the Palestinian man was shot dead near Jenin after he fired on soldiers carrying out a raid that captured his brother. Palestinian witnesses said he was killed without provocation while looking out a window.
A delegation of senior security and intelligence from Egypt, which helped broker the truce, planned a series of meetings with Islamist and Fatah faction leaders in Gaza into the evening. Hani Al-Masri, an official in the Palestinian Information Ministry, said that Abbas’ resignation offer had brought into focus divisions within the leadership. “It is evident that there is division among the Palestinian leadership over how to run the negotiations and the political process with the Israelis and who wields the power,” he told reporters. “But it is too early to say that there is a major ruction because the two sides (Arafat and Abbas) need each other.”
