A shaky truce that has marked a huge drop in Israeli-Palestinian violence during 2005 appears unlikely to be renewed at the year-end with armed factions accusing Israel of doing nothing in return.
Transgressed repeatedly by the most radical Palestinians and endangered frequently by Israeli military operations, the de facto ceasefire has nonetheless put the brakes on a deadly cycle of violence since September 2000.
First brokered by Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas in late January, the agreement was formalised at intra-Palestinian talks in Cairo last March.
There the main armed groups agreed to respect a period of calm ”limited” to the end of the year ”in exchange for an end to aggressions against our people”.
More than 150 Palestinians and 30 Israelis have been killed since late January — less than a half the yearly average number of deaths since the intifada broke out.
The vast majority of victims have been Palestinians.
As the truce’s expiry date nears, radical groups such as the powerful Islamist faction Hamas believe they merely handed Israel a gift on a plate and seem ill-disposed to renew the agreement.
Israel considers the informal truce an internal Palestinian affair and believes the Palestinian leadership should be responsible for preventing militant attacks and restoring order to the chaotic West Bank and Gaza Strip.
On December 9, Hamas political supremo Khaled Meshaal said the faction would not renew the truce, sparking a torrent of criticism from the Palestinian Authority and Washington.
The spokesperson for the faction in its Gaza stronghold, Sami Abu Zuhri, was more circumspect but left it understood that Hamas would not sign up to a new cool-down in the current circumstances.
”It is illogical to renew the truce while the Israeli escalation and aggression continues,” he said.
”A unilateral truce is pointless. It must be reciprocated and the Israeli enemy must first respect it,” he added.
Abu Zuhri charged that Israel had given nothing to the arrangement. ”It continued its aggressions and has not fulfilled a series of conditions, releasing prisoners in particular,” he said.
Islamic Jihad, which claimed the last five suicide attacks in Israel, said each bombing was to avenge Israeli ”violations” that nullify any question of renewing what the group barely respected in the first place.
”Today we believe the cool-down, even discussing it, is totally unnecessary,” said one of Jihad’s leaders in Gaza, Khaled al-Batsh.
”The enemy must understand it has to give back the Palestinian people its rights and stop its aggression. Renewing the truce will give it an opportunity to attack the resistance, Islamic Jihad in particular,” he added.
In recent months, the Israeli military has assassinated several militants and members of the movement in the West Bank and Gaza following Jihad attacks.
For Batsh, the truce has largely served Israel’s interests in allowing the government to withdraw soldiers and settlers from the Gaza Strip in September, following a 38-year occupation, without Palestinian fire.
”We have lost a lot and the truce has not protected our fighters,” he added.
The scheduled expiry of the truce coincides with heightened tension in Gaza where Israel wants to create, to great Palestinian displeasure, a security strip in the northern part of the territory to prevent rocket attacks.
In recent days, the army has also multiplied air raids and artillery bombardments against targets inside Gaza to counter the rocket attacks.
Palestinian Authority spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudeina said the army’s military response compromised the truce.
”The continued aggression and Israeli raids risk sabotaging efforts made by the Palestinian Authority to consolidate the truce,” he told Agence France Presse. – AFP
