GAZA CITY, 26 April 2008 — Israel yesterday dismissed a Hamas proposal for a six-month truce during which an embargo on the Gaza Strip would be lifted, saying the Palestinian group wanted to prepare for more fighting rather than peace.
The Hamas offer, issued on Thursday following talks with Egyptian mediators, departed from previous demands by the group that any cease-fire apply simultaneously in Gaza and the West Bank.
Hamas said Egypt would raise the truce idea with Israel next week and that it expected a more binding Israeli decision then.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said last month that military attacks on Gaza would cease if Hamas fighters stopped cross-border rocket salvos.
“Israel is interested in peace. Unfortunately, Hamas is playing games. Hamas is biding time in order to rearm and regroup,” David Baker, an Olmert spokesman, said yesterday. “Israel will continue to act to protect its citizens,” Baker said, in reference to airstrikes and commando raids in Gaza.
Hamas was unfazed by Baker’s comments, saying that an Egyptian mediator, Omar Suleiman, would visit Israel next week to take up the Gaza truce idea with the Olmert government.
“We will then get the Israeli response,” Hamas official Mahmoud Al-Zahar told reporters on returning to Gaza from Egypt.
Israel pulled troops and settlers out of the Gaza Strip in 2005 but still controls major border crossings and has tightened this cordon.
Some Israeli officials have said the blockade aims both to pressure Hamas to stop rocket fire and, in the long run, to bring about the collapse of its rule over Gaza’s 1.5 million Palestinians, most of whom depend on foreign aid.
But Baker described the closures as a security concern — raising the possibility of a change in Israeli policy should there be a halt to hostilities by Hamas.
“The issue of the borders is subject to the prevailing security situation,” he said without elaborating.
Zahar made clear that Hamas would reject such linkage.
“If they lift the siege, as is our condition, and reopen the crossings, then OK. Otherwise we have our options. Our enemy is Israel and our goal is to break the siege,” he said. “This calm is not free.”
According to Hamas, should the proposed Gaza truce take hold, Egypt would work to extend it to the West Bank, where violence has persisted, albeit less intensively than in Gaza.
Abbas refuses to talk to Hamas unless it first relinquishes Gaza. He has regularly condemned Israel’s military actions, whose civilian tolls in Gaza have boosted Hamas’ popularity while not significantly stemming the rocket fire.
“We hope that this (Hamas truce) proposal is a serious one, and we hope it will be taken seriously by Israel,” Abbas aide Nimer Hammad said.
