Diplomatic efforts failed to produce the much-promised ceasefire by Hamas yesterday, or an end to Israel’s widely condemned assassination strategy.
Mediators from the Egyptian intelligence service could not persuade Hamas and other factions in Gaza to stop attacking Israelis, and George Bush’s envoy, John Wolf, fared no better in trying to talk the Israelis into ending their ”targeted killings”.
A third set of talks, between representatives of the Israeli and Palestinian prime ministers, was expected to resume discussion on proposals for an Israeli military withdrawal from most of the Gaza Strip. But they too are hampered by Israel’s refusal to give up assassinations and other military strikes in Gaza.
In Luxembourg, EU foreign ministers said the political wing of Hamas might be blacklisted if it failed to accept a ceasefire. But the French minister, Dominique de Villepin, made it clear that he opposed the ban supported by the foreign secretary, Jack Straw.
Straw said: ”There is mounting evidence that the military and political wings of Hamas are very extensively intertwined. Hamas has rejected the road map and is literally trying to blow it up.”
The Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, was given a hostile reception by MPs. His leftwing opponents accused him of trying to wreck the road map by the botched attempt to assassinate the Hamas political leader Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi, which provoked a week of bloodshed and the loss of about 65 lives.
Rightwingers accused him of pandering to terrorism. But he was given a comfortable majority vote on the issue after promising that Israel would continue to pursue terrorists ”in every place and every situation”.
Sharon wants to reserve the army’s right to hit ”ticking bombs” — usually defined as anyone responsible for planning or launching suicide or other attacks. The army chief of staff, Lieutenant General Moshe Yaalon, went further. He told some of his soldiers that he did not care if the army ”looks like lunatics”, it was ”determined to fight Hamas”.
The Palestinians say that further attacks will undermine their attempts to impose security in Gaza, in part because supposedly ”targeted” missiles claim so many innocent lives and thereby increase support for Hamas.
It is assumed that the sheer weight of US diplomacy will force the Israelis and Palestinians, including Hamas, into an accommodation that will allow the White House to press on with the road map. But one Hamas leader, Ismail Abu Shanab, said it was premature to talk about a ceasefire, which he described as a ”surrender to occupation”.
”Now is not a time for truce. It is time for solidarity and standing united against Israeli attacks on our people,” he said.
Other Palestinian leaders said they remained hopeful of an agreement for a ceasefire, in practice if not in name.
The Egyptian mediators also met representatives of Islamic Jihad, who, like Hamas, said that a ceasefire would apply only to attacks within Israel’s 1967 borders, and that soldiers enforcing the occupation and settlers would remain legitimate targets.
The Egyptians offered to take all the parties to Cairo to continue the talks.
Wolf met Israeli foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, who took an even harder line than Sharon, declaring that a limited truce was no substitute for disarming and dismantling Hamas and similar organisations. He said: ”These extremist groups and their infrastructure must be broken up.”
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat last night contacted the family of Marwan Barghouti, being tried by Israel for allegedly masterminding terrorist attacks that claimed 26 lives, to say he will be released within two days, family members said.
Israeli officials were not available for comment, and relatives expressed scepticism about Arafat’s news. – Guardian Unlimited Â