Israeli troops again pounded Gaza on Friday, as Israel also sought to pile up pressure on the Islamists in truce negotiations gathering pace in Egypt to end the Jewish state’s deadliest war on the enclave.
Hamas’s exiled political supremo, Khaled Meshaal, told an Arab meeting in Doha that his Islamist movement would not accept Israel’s truce conditions after a senior aide presented the Islamists’ own conditions for a ceasefire.
Israel sent envoys to Egypt for more talks on Cairo’s truce plan and to the United States to sign an agreement on preventing arms smuggling into Gaza, its key demand for ending the offensive that has killed more than 1 100 people in 21 days.
”We hope we’re heading toward the end,” government spokesperson Mark Regev said. ”There is a lot of diplomatic activity and at the same time the military pressure on Hamas continues.”
Visiting United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon said that a deal on a truce appeared ”very close” and that he hoped it could be sealed within a couple of days.
Calling Israel’s offensive an ”unprecedented catastrophe”, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad appealed for an immediate halt to the fighting.
”Each passing hour means more people die,” he said.
But a senior government official told Agence France-Presse that the Jewish state did not intend to lessen its military strikes in the battered territory.
”The prime minister believes that the army should continue pressing Hamas in order to consolidate the gains made so far and guarantee that any ceasefire reached will be long-lasting,” he said on condition of anonymity.
A day after Israeli raids set landmark buildings ablaze in Gaza’s main city, the military pummelled the territory with about 40 air strikes against fighters, tunnels and a mosque suspected of being used as a weapons store, the army said.
In the pre-dawn hours, Israeli tanks withdrew from the Gaza City neighbourhood of Tal Al-Hawa, where clashes the previous day levelled parts of the residential area and set a hospital ablaze.
At least 23 bodies were pulled from the rubble in Tal Al-Hawa and elsewhere after medics rushed to the neighbourhood, the site of furious clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinian fighters that sent hundreds of terrified civilians fleeing for safety.
Israel on Thursday killed Hamas Interior Minister Said Siam, the most senior Islamist leader killed since the start of Operation Cast Lead on December 27.
The war has sparked widespread protests and on Friday the Israeli army killed a 15-year-old Palestinian teenager on the sidelines of a demonstration in the West Bank town of Hebron, medics said.
Since Israel unleashed Operation Cast Lead on December 27, at least 1 139 Palestinians have been killed and another 5 130 wounded, according to Gaza medics, Agence France-Presse reports. About 600 of the victims have been civilians, including 355 children, the medics say.
On the Israeli side, 10 soldiers and three civilians have been killed as a result of combat or rocket fire.
Israel says its offensive is intended to stop the rockets but Gaza militants have continued the fire and have now launched more than 700 rockets or mortar rounds during the assault.
Truce
On the diplomatic front, Egypt pressed on with its Western-backed efforts to broker a truce.
Israeli negotiator Amos Gilad returned to Egypt to discuss the details of a possible ceasefire after holding four hours of talks in Cairo on Thursday.
Meanwhile, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni was to travel to Washington to sign a memorandum on joint efforts to halt smuggling along the Gaza-Egypt border — a key Israeli demand for halting the war.
The deputy head of Hamas’s Damascus-based leadership in exile, Mussa Abu Marzuk, said the Islamists were ready to accept a one-year renewable truce if Israel pulls its troops out of Gaza.
Hamas is awaiting Israel’s response, Abu Marzuk said, adding that the offer is also conditional on Israel’s lifting of the crippling blockade it has imposed on Gaza since the Islamists seized power.
In Cairo, Gilad will tell officials that Israel wants an and will only agree to Palestinian Authority forces on the enclave’s border with Egypt, officials told AFP on Friday.
Hamas, which seized control of Gaza in June 2007 in a violent coup that ousted forces loyal to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, wants to be represented at Gaza’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt.
Russia, which is one of the few world powers to have dealings with Hamas, urged the group’s backers, Iran and Syria, to pressure it to accept the Egyptian-brokered truce plan.
The offensive has prompted fears of a humanitarian crisis in one of the world’s most densely populated territories where the vast majority of the 1,5-million population depends on foreign aid. — AFP
