Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has made a direct appeal to Israel for a new truce, saying it can win the backing of Hamas, as one of the radical group’s fighters was killed in a raid by Israeli ground forces in the Gaza Strip on Thursday.
In a series of interviews with the Israeli media, Arafat fleshed out a proposal for a new truce that was initially snubbed.
”Yes, I am ready to renew the hudna. I call on Israel to renew the hudna,” he told Thursday’s edition of the Yediot Aharonot daily.
”If the Israeli government takes a positive position, we can succeed. I tell the Israelis: enough blood, enough of the destruction and of the daily suffering. Our position has always been against killing Palestinians or Israelis.”
Arafat’s national security adviser, Jibril Rajoub, called for an indefinite ceasefire between the two sides earlier this week, but his proposal was dismissed as a ”honeytrap” by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s spokesperson.
And in an interview late on Wednesday with Israeli television, Arafat also said that he wanted a truce.
”All the world wants peace, for the good of the Middle East and future generations of both peoples.”
Armed Palestinian groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad had been observing a seven-week truce until a massive suicide bomb in Jerusalem on August 19 was claimed by both groups.
However, Arafat told Yediot that he believed both factions could be persuaded to halt again their campaign of attacks against Israel.
”Islamic Jihad is already ready, and now we are working on Hamas. So far the results have been positive. There is a positive attitude on their part,” he said.
But the hawkish Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz gave the Arafat proposal short shrift, saying that groups such as Hamas had to be dismantled rather than made party to a truce.
”Israel will not make any concessions until the Palestinian government proves its real intentions to seriously tackle the terrorist organisations,” Mofaz told military radio on Thursday.
But Infrastructure Minister Yosef Paritzsky, a member of the centrist Shinui party in Sharon’s coalition government, was more welcoming.
”We shouldn’t reject the Palestinian proposition,” he told Israeli radio.
”We should examine it in detail as it’s in our interest. If not, we will be seen abroad as the ones who do not want to hear anything.”
Israel has declared all-out war on Hamas since the August 19 Jerusalem bus bomb, launching a series of air strikes on the group’s leadership in the Gaza Strip.
And Israeli forces early on Thursday killed a member of Hamas’s armed wing in a Gaza Strip refugee camp in a rare ground operation.
Jihad Abu Suheireh (34), a member of the Ezzedin al-Qassam Brigades, died when the Israeli soldiers demolished the house where he had taken shelter in the Nuseirat refugee camp.
Seven other Palestinians were wounded in the raid, including the victim’s brother and father, witnesses and medical sources said.
Backed up by an assault helicopter, the soldiers entered the camp in jeeps and tanks from the neighbouring Netzarim Jewish settlement near Gaza City and surrounded the house.
The helicopter fired rockets, destroying the building.
Exchanges of automatic gunfire were heard during the operation and an Israeli military spokesperson said two soldiers had been slightly injured.
Suheireh’s death brings the death toll since the start of the Palestinian intifada nearly three years ago to 3 482, including 2 600 Palestinians and 819 Israelis.
Meanwhile, about 30 tanks and armoured vehicles staged an incursion on Thursday into the West Bank town of Jenin and surrounding refugee camps, imposing a curfew, Palestinian security sources said.
The Israelis exchanged gunfire with Palestinians as they conducted searches in a bid to capture wanted militants, the sources said. It was not known if anyone was injured in the exchanges. — Sapa-AFP