Israeli and Palestinian officials have been holding secret talks aimed at ending the vast Israeli operation launched in the northern Gaza Strip last week, an Israeli government source said on Tuesday.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the source said a senior Palestinian official had appealed to the office of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ”several days ago” for Israel to end the week-long operation, which has claimed more than 80 lives, most of them Palestinian.
Sharon’s office did not reject the demand outright but asked the official for guarantees that the Palestinian rockets being fired at Israeli targets would be stopped, he said.
The official said he had asked the leadership of the radical Hamas movement to stop the attacks, which are usually carried out by militants from the group’s armed wing.
Since the initial contact was made, the two sides have been talking daily and contact has even been established in the field
between Israeli commanders and Palestinian security officials, he said.
Palestinian officials would not confirm or deny the report.
News of the talks first appeared in two mass-circulation Israeli dailies. According to the reports, Israel would pull its troops out of the northern Gaza Strip in return for a Palestinian commitment that rocket fire on towns and villages inside Israel would cease.
The talks are being held with the help of European and Egyptian officials, the reports said.
The Yediot Aharanot daily reported that officials in Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz’s bureau said Israel would not pull its troops out of the northern Gaza Strip — where they have carved out a buffer zone — until it was convinced the Palestinians would indeed halt the rocket fire.
Israeli officials have previously said the operation had no time limit, and Premier Ariel Sharon said on Saturday night that he had ordered the army to take all ”necessary and possible measures” to bring about ”an absolute end” to the rocket fire.
A senior Palestinian official, President Yasser Arafat’s security advisor Jibril Rajoub, denied that talks were taking place.
”There are no contacts,” he said. ”If they (the Israelis) want to discuss how to end their aggression, then we will react positively to a suggestion for a full cease-fire,” he said.
More than 80 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive. Five Israelis have also been killed, two of them in a
rocket barrage on Sderot last Wednesday evening.
The latest Palestinian casualties came on Tuesday when an Israeli airstrike killed one militant and wounded two others in the Jabalya refugee camp, where Israeli troops are operating as part of the buffer zone. The strike was reportedly carried out by a remote pilotless vehicle.
In an unrelated incident, troops also killed an armed Palestinian, identified as a member of the Islamic militant Hamas
organisation, in a clash north of Hebron.
Hours later, Israeli troops stationed on the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt shot dead a Palestinian teenage girl.
Palestinian medics said Eman al-Hams, 13, was shot at from an Israeli army observation tower in the Tal al-Sultan neighborhood of the town of Rafah, on the border with Egypt.
Her body was riddled with 20 bullets, including five in the head, Dr Ali Musa from Rafah hospital said. ”She arrived dead
at the hospital.”
Omar Khalifa, a 29-year-old local garage owner, said he saw troops firing in the direction of Eman and two other pupils.
”The girl started to run away and soldiers then fired at her satchel which she had thrown on the ground,” the witness said.
”Three troops got out of a tank positioned next to the tower and fired at her,” he added. ”They formed a circle around her body and only allowed rescue workers to take it away half an hour later.”
Israeli military sources said troops posted along the Egyptian border had fired at the girl after she crossed into a restricted
zone and was spotted planting ”what seemed to be an explosive charge”.
The same sources said later that Palestinian gunmen had traded fire with soldiers in the area. – Sapa