A tentative truce appeared to take hold in Gaza on Thursday after days of fierce fighting between rival factions that has killed dozens and sent the Palestinian unity Cabinet to the brink of collapse.
In a move that could further ignite the volatile territory, Israel vowed it would hit militants firing rockets from Gaza, after becoming drawn into the fray by launching air strikes that left four gunmen dead on Wednesday.
Sporadic gunfire rattled in Gaza streets where masked gunmen roamed and snipers patrolled rooftops, but there were no reports of deadly shootings between the rival Hamas and Fatah groups.
After days cowering in their homes, residents ventured outdoors and some traffic returned to the streets of the impoverished territory, one of the most densely populated places on the planet.
”Nothing has changed since yesterday [Wednesday] except that there is less shooting and explosions,” said Yad Aziz (35) a pharmacist in Gaza City. ”The situation is more dangerous than under the Israeli occupation. Back then, we knew from where the bullets came, now they can come from anywhere.”
President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah was due to travel to Gaza on Thursday for talks with Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya on ending the violence that has killed 44 people and wounded more than 100 since Sunday.
The rival groups agreed their fourth truce in as many days on Wednesday in a bid to stop the fighting and reprisal attacks that have shaken their two-month-old unity Cabinet and raised fears of a full-blown civil war.
The bloodshed also threatens to torpedo any efforts to revive Middle East peacemaking after Arab states adopted a revived peace plan offering normal ties with Israel if it withdraws from land occupied in war in 1967.
But within hours of the latest truce, two Fatah loyalists and three Hamas militants were killed in separate shootings. Three previous ceasefires collapsed within hours since Sunday.
Overnight, gunmen also opened fire on Haniya’s home in Gaza, his office said. His bodyguards returned fire and the gunmen ran off. Nobody was injured.
Distrust remained high between the two groups that have been at loggerheads ever since the Islamists of Hamas trounced long-dominant secular party Fatah in a January 2006 election.
”We don’t trust Hamas as they have violated all the agreements,” Maher Maqdad, a senior Fatah official in Gaza, told Agence France-Presse, adding that the new truce could be ”nothing but a manoeuvre by Hamas”.
The bloodshed — the third bout of deadly violence since December — has terrified Gaza residents, worn down by months of factional feuding and an aid boycott imposed by the West and Israel after Hamas came to power last year.
In a move that could further complicate the situation, Israel vowed to hit militants continuing to fire rockets, as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ordered a ”severe response” to the attacks that have wounded four civilians since Sunday.
”We are going to hit all those who are implicated in the firings and the production of rockets,” Deputy Defence Minister Ephraim Sneh told army radio.
A Fatah loyalist died of his wounds on Thursday, bringing to 44 the number of people killed since Sunday, two of them civilians.
The unity Cabinet took office on March 17 in a Saudi-mediated power-sharing deal that was supposed to put an end to fighting that left about 100 Palestinians dead in December and January.
But tensions between the two rivals continued to simmer, stoked by disagreements last week over a US security plan for the region, and boiled over when a Hamas loyalist was killed by a Fatah man on Sunday.
In a major blow to the fledgling administration, interior minister Hani al-Qawasmeh quit on Monday, complaining that he had not been granted adequate authority and accused the government of not taking security seriously.
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, the European Union and the United States have called for a halt to the violence, while Western allies in the Arab world have also voiced deep concern, with Jordanian King Abdullah II warning that the fighting will rebound ”on the future of Palestine.”
”This is something that certainly does nothing to help advance the cause of the Palestinian people, certainly does not help bring them any closer to achieving the Palestinian state the people want and desire, and certainly does not help the humanitarian situation for the Palestinian people,” US State Department deputy spokesperson Tom Casey told reporters. – AFP
