JERUSALEM: US President Barack Obama’s new Middle East envoy sought yesterday to strengthen a 10-day-old Gaza cease-fire that was thrown into turmoil as Israeli warplanes pounded Gaza smuggling tunnels in retaliation for a Palestinian bombing that killed a soldier.
As the Israeli Cabinet met to consider how far to go in its response to Tuesday’s bombing, US envoy George Mitchell called for the cease-fire to “be extended and consolidated.” Mitchell’s tour launches the first Mideast foray of the new Obama administration. Obama said his envoy would listen to all sides before crafting an approach for moving forward with stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts.
After talks in Jerusalem with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Mitchell said “consolidating the cease-fire” is “of critical importance.” He said a longer-term cease-fire should be based on “an end to smuggling and reopening of the crossings” into Gaza, which have largely been closed since Hamas took over in 2007.
He said that after finishing his consultations in the region and with the Europeans, he will report to Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on how to move forward.
“The United States is committed to vigorously pursuing lasting peace and stability in the region,” said Mitchell, who met earlier yesterday with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo, the first stop on his Mideast tour.
Mitchell said the crossings should be opened on the basis of a 2005 agreement brokered by the US that put the main crossing — the passage between Egypt and Gaza — under the management of President Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority, with European monitors deployed to prevent smuggling.
However, Hamas has said it too wants a role at the crossings in recognition of its power in the territory. Israel and Abbas do not want Hamas there.
Olmert told Mitchell that Hamas’ power in Gaza “must diminish” and Abbas must “gain a foothold” there, an Olmert aide said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Olmert said crossings between Israel and Gaza “will only open permanently” after the freeing of Sgt. Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier Gaza fighters captured in June 2006, the aide said. Israel has been trying to negotiate a prisoner swap with Hamas to secure Shalit’s release.
Hamas has resisted any linkage between Shalit’s release and the reopening of crossings.
Egypt has been exploring the possibility of including some Hamas figures in a Palestinian Authority presence at the border, but that would require some form of reconciliation between the factions, which remain rivals. Egypt hopes to hold reconciliation talks between Hamas and Abbas by mid-February.
Mitchell is expected to meet Abbas in the West Bank today. But the new violence cast a shadow over Mitchell’s mission. The flare-up is the worst since Israel and Hamas separately declared cease-fires on Jan. 18 to end a three-week Israeli offensive against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Since withdrawing its troops, Israel has threatened to retaliate for any violations of the informal truce.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak canceled a planned trip to Washington this week to deal with the crisis, defense officials said.
By yesterday afternoon, there were signs the flare-up may have calmed. The Israeli military said it did not carry out any further action in Gaza after airstrikes in the early morning. Israeli officials did not comment whether a morning Cabinet session had considered more retaliation.
The soldier was killed on Tuesday on Israel’s frontier with the Gaza Strip by a roadside bomb planted on the Gaza side and set off by remote control, the military said. Three other soldiers patrolling the border were injured.
Israel responded swiftly, sending tanks and bulldozers into northern Gaza to plow up the attack site and launch an airstrike that wounded a Hamas fighter, the military said. Hamas said the Israeli strike injured one of its men as he rode a motorcycle in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis.
Airstrikes early yesterday targeted the network of tunnels used to smuggle arms, money and people into Gaza from Egypt. Israel bombed the tunnels heavily during the war.
There was no claim of responsibility for Tuesday’s bombing, but Ramattan, a Palestinian news agency, released a video of the roadside bombing allegedly filmed by men it did not identify.
“Israel wants the quiet in the south to continue but yesterday’s attack is a deliberate provocation designed to undermine and torpedo the calm. If Hamas acts to undermine the cease-fire, it will have no one but itself to blame for the consequences,” Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev told The Associated Press.
Meanwhile, Israel’s Foreign Ministry said it ordered Venezuelan diplomats in the country to leave. The move comes in retaliation for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s decision to sever ties earlier this month to protest Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip. At the time, Bolivia also severed ties with the Jewish state.
