CAIRO, 7 December 2003 — Palestinian groups trying to agree on a cease-fire with Israel remain as far apart as ever, officials said yesterday. Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s moderate Fatah faction wants a clear statement from all 13 groups at Egyptian-mediated talks in Cairo accepting a total cease-fire with Israel to pave the way for resuming peace talks, they said.
But the Hamas resistance group, which leads suicide bombings against Israelis, only wanted to discuss stopping attacks on civilians. Egyptian mediators, working through the night with the two parties, failed to bridge the gaps, casting doubt on a successful outcome of the discussions, officials said.
A Palestinian official at the talks said Hamas and four other factions were prepared to halt attacks against civilians without preconditions. Israel has said any agreement offering to halt attacks only against Israeli civilians was not enough.
Hamas officials said the group had agreed its position with the four factions and would only consider freezing attacks on soldiers and Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank and Gaza if Israel stopped all attacks on Palestinians first.
But leading Hamas official Musa Abu Marzuk said on Friday his group was leaving the door ajar for an agreement over a conditional cease-fire. An Arab diplomat close to the discussions said that in bilateral talks with Egyptian officials, Hamas had shown some flexibility.
“Hamas could accept a conditional cease-fire with Israel but it does not want a public announcement of such a position,” the diplomat told Reuters. “One of the options was that it would ask Omar Suleiman (Egypt’s intelligence chief mediating the truce) and Abu Ala (Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei) to quietly get Israeli guarantees to accept a truce after which there would be a mutual ceasefire declaration,” he said.
Qorei arrived in Cairo yesterday to join the talks but because of the differences would delay his participation until today when he would join a final session with Suleiman, the senior Fatah official said. Qorei plans to meet Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to discuss a cease-fire and reviving stalled peace moves.
A cease-fire is seen as a critical step toward salvaging a US-backed “road map”, which foresees an end to violence and a Palestinian state by 2005. Hamas officials said they had drafted a paper yesterday with four other Damascus-based factions including Islamic Jihad, outlining their joint position on a cease-fire with Israel, but that this was not final.
“We will also wait to hear what Abu Ala has to say,” said a senior Hamas official at the talks. Islamic Jihad vowed fresh attacks on Israel on Friday and said it would not abide by any agreement to stop.
“Our strong answer inside the Zionist state will not be long,” said the Al-Quds Brigades, Jihad’s armed wing. “We will give a very strong response to the Zionist crimes in Ramallah, Jenin and Rafah and to the ongoing transfer of our Mujahedeen.”
It was referring to recent Israeli operations in the West Bank and the southern Gaza Strip, and to the deportation Friday of 12 Palestinian detainees from the West Bank to Gaza.
