GAZA CITY, 27 November 2006 — After an unexpected cease-fire deal took hold yesterday morning, Israeli troops withdrew from the Gaza Strip but two major Palestinian fighter groups, saying they had no intention of stopping their attacks, fired volleys of homemade rockets into Israel.
The ongoing rocket attacks by Hamas and Islamic Jihad tempered hopes for a lasting truce, which was meant to end five months of deadly clashes. The rockets landed in open fields and caused no injuries.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met with his security chiefs yesterday and ordered them to send their forces to the Gaza border area by early afternoon to prevent further rocket attacks, according to Palestinian security officials.
By midafternoon, security officers had fanned out across northern Gaza, saying they had orders to stop anyone suspicious.
“The instructions are clear. Anyone violating the national agreement will be considered to be breaking the law,” said Lt. Gen. Abdel Razek Almajaydeh, an Abbas security adviser. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ordered the army to show restraint in the face of the rockets.
“Even though there are still violations of the cease-fire by the Palestinian side, I have instructed our defense officials not to respond, to show restraint, and to give this cease-fire a chance to take full effect,” he said during a ceremony at a high school in southern Israel.
A senior Israeli official said Israel would wait a few hours to see if the attacks were isolated breaches or a full-scale violation of the agreement before deciding whether to respond.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
The truce agreement, if it holds, would be a coup for Abbas, who has been trying for months to end the violence in Gaza. He has also been working to end crippling international sanctions imposed on the Palestinian Authority when the Hamas group won January parliamentary elections and formed a Cabinet.
Abbas, a moderate from the Fatah party, was elected separately last year.
The two sides announced the truce late Saturday after Abbas telephoned Olmert with an agreement from Palestinian fighter groups to halt rocket fire and other violence from Gaza.
Olmert pledged to end the military offensive Israel launched in Gaza in June, less than a year after it pulled out of the coastal strip after 38 years of occupation. Israel launched its offensive after Hamas fighters in Gaza launched a crossborder raid on a military outpost, killing two soldiers and capturing one other.
The violence has claimed the lives of more than 300 Palestinians and five Israelis. Most of the Palestinians killed have been fighters, but scores of civilians have been killed as well, including 19 members of an extended family killed earlier this month in a botched Israeli artillery attack.
Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeinah said the cease-fire deal would revive a truce reached in Egypt in February 2005.
Ahead of the new agreement, which took effect 6 a.m. yesterday, Israel pulled all its forces out of Gaza, the army said. Dozens of tanks and armored vehicles were parked just over the border in a military staging ground in southern Israel early yesterday.
— With input from agencies
But Palestinian fighters continued firing rockets into Israel throughout the morning. Israeli police reported at least four rockets fired at the Israeli town of Sderot and an Associated Press photographer in the border town heard at least two more strikes. Another AP photographer in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun heard several rockets fired throughout the morning.
“Let’s hope that’s just the problems of the beginning,” Olmert’s spokeswoman, Miri Eisin, said of the rockets. “But if Israel is attacked, we will respond. If there are Palestinian factions that are not part of the cease-fire, it’s hard to see how the cease-fire will hold.”
Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas said he had contacted the leaders of all the Palestinian factions yesterday and they reassured him they were committed to the truce.
“There is a 100 percent effort to make this work, but there is no guarantee of 100 percent results,” said Ghazi Hamad, a spokesman for the Hamas-led government.
Hamas’ own fighters claimed responsibility for firing rockets into Israel after 6 a.m., clouding prospects for the truce’s longevity.
“(We) reiterate that our attacks against the enemy continue,” the group said in a statement posted on its website.
The Hamas fighters said they continued their attacks because some Israeli troops remained inside Gaza, an accusation Israel denied.
Islamic Jihad also claimed responsibility for firing rockets into Israel after the truce, and a spokesman, Abu Hamza, denied his group had signed on to truce. However, top Islamic Jihad leaders had said they were part of the deal, and the new rocket fire suggested they were not in complete control of their fighters.
Palestinian lawmaker Saeb Erekat, an Abbas ally, condemned the new rocket attacks.
“This is a violation and (Abbas) calls it a violation, and urges all to abide by the agreement that should be honored for the interest of the Palestinian people,” he said.
Israeli forces originally entered Gaza to try to recover a soldier captured in a June 25 crossborder raid, but they soon widened their objectives to target fighters firing rockets into Israel.
As the fighting swelled, rocket fire in November more than doubled from October, killing two Israeli civilians in a single week.
The violence cut short efforts by Olmert and Abbas to restart peace talks. A truce could help create momentum for new talks.
“We welcome the announcement and see this as a positive step forward,” White House spokesman Alex Conant said Saturday evening in Washington. “We hope it leads to less violence for the Israeli and Palestinian people.”
Israel has no ties with the Hamas government, which rejects the Jewish state’s right to exist, but it considers Abbas an acceptable negotiating partner. He and Olmert agreed months ago to meet, but Abbas has balked at setting a date without assurances the meeting would yield real dividends for him, such as a release of Palestinian prisoners Israel holds.
Olmert has said no prisoners would be released to Hamas before the captured soldier is freed.
A cease-fire in Gaza is part of a broad package Abbas is trying to put together in the hope of restoring hundreds of millions of dollars in funding Western donors cut off to pressure Hamas to recognize Israel and renounce violence.
