JERUSALEM: An agreement between Hamas and Israel to bring quiet to the war-torn Gaza Strip could be announced within days, Hamas officials said, but a cross-border exchange of fire between the sides yesterday further strained an informal cease-fire.
Two rockets and a mortar shell fell in southern Israel, the Israeli military said. No one was injured, and no Palestinian group took responsibility for the attacks.
Hours later an Israeli airstrike killed a man and critically wounded another near the Gaza town of Khan Younis. The dead man was a member of Popular Resistance Committees.
In the West Bank city of Hebron, staff at a local hospital said a teenage boy was killed when Israeli troops opened fire on Palestinian youths. Doctors at Alia Hospital identified the dead boy as Izzadine Jamal, 14.
Yesterday’s violence came as Hamas officials said talks in Cairo aimed at achieving a long-term truce were close to success. A Hamas delegation is in the Egyptian capital, and an Israeli envoy has been flying in periodically from Tel Aviv. Egypt is mediating between Israel and Hamas because the sides will not talk directly to each other.
Late Thursday, Hamas deputy leader Moussa Abu Marzouk told Egypt’s official MENA news agency that the group had agreed to an 18-month truce with Israel and that it would be announced within two days after the group consults with other Palestinian factions. Abu Marzouk said the deal calls for Israel to reopen its border crossings into Gaza, fulfilling Hamas’ central demand.
The border crossings have been blockaded by Israel and Egypt since Hamas violently seized power in the territory in June 2007, defeating its rivals from the Fatah movement.
Taher Nunu, a Hamas spokesman in Cairo with the group’s truce delegation, said yesterday he expects an agreement “within the coming three days.” He said progress had been made on a cease-fire, on a reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah, and on reconstruction funds for Gaza.
“Many obstacles have been resolved, especially stopping all forms of aggression and the issue of the quality and kind of goods (entering Gaza) and the opening of the border,” Nunu said in a statement e-mailed to reporters in Gaza.
Little has leaked from the Israeli side on the truce talks. In Jerusalem, government officials would not comment. Egyptian state-run newspapers quoted Egypt’s top mediator, intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, as saying that four obstacles remained to be resolved: Firing rockets, establishing a buffer zone between Gaza and Israel, a Hamas commitment to respect calm and a halt to weapons smuggling into the Gaza Strip.
In The Hague, two Palestinian ministers yesterday pressed the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor to launch a probe into Israeli war crimes they said have been committed against Palestinians since 2002.
Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Al-Malki and his justice counterpart, Ali Kashan, told reporters they had submitted documents to ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo that prove Palestine is a legal state with the right to request such a probe.
“Today we came to deliver a set of documents that shows that Palestine as a state ... has the ability to present a case to the court and to ask for an investigation into crimes committed by the Israeli Army,” Kashan said on the steps outside the ICC in The Hague after a four-hour meeting.
“We will deliver more information about war crimes and crimes against humanity — not only in Gaza during the last Israeli attack, but also from 2002 until this moment,” he added.
