CAIRO/RAMALLAH, 7 March 2008 — Egypt yesterday tried to convince the Palestinian group Hamas to accept a truce that would involve halting rocket attacks on Israel, in an effort to put an end to violence in the Gaza Strip and salvage Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

Deputies of Egypt’s intelligence chief Omar Suleiman met with officials from Hamas and Islamic Jihad yesterday in the Egyptian Sinai city of El-Arish, security officials said.

Talks on a truce were high on the agenda, said one security official.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has proposed a truce plan by which Hamas would halt rocket fire into Israel, and in return Israel would stop military activity in the Gaza Strip, the blockade of Gaza would be eased and the main border crossing between the territory and Egypt would be opened, Palestinian officials said.

Egyptian officials have not specified whether the truce discussions they were holding with Hamas were centered on this proposal. Israel has not commented on the proposal, saying only that if the rocket fire stops, Israel will stop going after Gaza fighters.

Egypt, meanwhile, has started building a three-meter high concrete wall along its border with the Gaza Strip in a bid to prevent a repetition of a January breach that saw Palestinians flood into Egypt, a security official told AFP.

“Egypt has started work on a three-meter high wall along the border with Gaza,” the official said, adding that a three-kilometer section of the wall had already been erected. “It is a preventative measure. There is no threat of another border breach at the moment,” the official said.

Humanitarian Situation Grave

A coalition of eight British-based human rights organizations yesterday released a scathing report in claiming that the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is at its worst point since Israel captured the territory in 1967.

The report said that more than 1.1 million people, about 80 percent of Gaza’s residents, are now dependent on food aid, as opposed to 63 percent in 2006, unemployment around 40 percent and nearly 70 percent of the 110,000 workers employed in the private sector have lost their jobs.

It also said that hospitals are suffering from power cuts of up to 12 hours a day, and the water and sewage systems were close to collapse, with 40-50 million liters (10-12 million gallons) of sewage pouring into the sea daily.

“Israel has the right and obligation to protect its citizens, but as the occupying power in Gaza it also has a legal duty to ensure that Gazans have access to food, clean water, electricity and medical care,” said Amnesty International UK Director Kate Allen, one of groups behind the report. “Punishing the entire Gazan population by denying them these basic human rights is utterly indefensible. The current situation is man-made and must be reversed.”

Israel removed all 21 settlements and withdrew its forces from Gaza in 2005. It maintains that it ended its occupation, but rights groups say that since Israel still controls Gaza’s land, sea and air access, it is still the occupier.

The 16-page report — sponsored by Amnesty, along with CARE International UK, CAFOD, Christian Aid, Medecins du Monde UK, Oxfam, Save the Children UK and Trocaire — calls on the British government to exert greater pressure on Israel and to reverse its policy of not negotiating with Gaza’s Hamas rulers. “The main responsibility for events in Gaza — since the withdrawal of Israel from the territory and the uprooting of the settlements there — is the Hamas organization, to which all complaints should be addressed,” read a statement by a spokesman, Maj. Peter Lerner.

Israeli Soldier Killed

Palestinian fighters ambushed an Israeli Army jeep patrolling the border with the Gaza Strip, then attacked a rescue crew that rushed to the scene, killing one soldier and wounding three others in a cross-border attack, according to military and witness accounts.

The ambush raised the possibility of a fresh round of violence in Gaza, just two days after Israel ended an offensive that killed more than 120 Palestinians. Senior Israeli military officers held an emergency meeting to plot a response, officials said.

Palestinian witnesses said a large explosion tore through the jeep, which was on the Israeli side of the border fence near the Kissufim crossing into central Gaza, and set it on fire. Several other army vehicles, along with an army helicopter, arrived to rescue the wounded, but also came under fire, the witnesses said.

Military officials said a bomb had been set off next to the jeep. One of the wounded was in serious condition, the army said. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the ambush. Hamas said its men also participated in the attack. Abu Ahmad, a spokesman for Islamic Jihad, said the attack was revenge for an Israeli strike a day earlier that killed one of the group’s commanders in southern Gaza.

Early yesterday, an elderly Palestinian woman died of heart attack when Israeli soldiers raided her home in West Bank refugee camp of Balata, Palestinian medical and security sources said.

The relatives of 72-year-old Zakiyeh Al-Ammouri said that she was “terrified due to the Israeli forces’ savage storming of her home to arrest her wanted nephew.”

Palestinian medics arrived to her home and tried to save her life but to no avail, the relatives said.

— With input from agencies