Palestinian militants announced a one-week ceasefire on Sunday after Israel called a unilateral halt to its massive offensive on Gaza, as medics pulled dozens of bodies from the rubble of bombed-out homes.
After exchanges of gunfire and an air strike punctured what Israel Prime Minister Ehud Olmert acknowledged was a ”fragile” ceasefire, Gaza’s Islamist rulers, Hamas, and other armed groups said they would silence their guns for the next seven days to give Israeli troops a chance to withdraw from the territory.
”We in the Palestinian resistance movements announce a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and demand that enemy forces withdraw in a week and open all the border crossings to permit the entry of humanitarian aid and basic goods,” Mussa Abu Marzuk, the deputy leader of Hamas’s politburo, said in Damascus.
Dawud Shihab, a Gaza-based spokesperson for Islamic Jihad, a smaller armed faction, said the truce would give an opportunity for Arab governments to put pressure on Israel to withdraw all its troops.
”During this period, the resistance is ready to respond to all efforts by the Egyptians, Turks, Syrians and Arabs that will allow for a total withdrawal of Israeli soldiers and the total opening of border crossings,” said.
However, Palestinian militants in Gaza fired two rockets into Israel after Hamas and other armed factions announced the ceasefire, Israeli police said.
”One rocket hit the area of Netivot and another in a village in southern Israel,” police spokesperson Micky Rosenfeld said.
There were no casualties reported from the fire, which occurred several hours after Hamas confirmed that it and other armed factions were announcing a one-week ceasefire.
Meanwhile, an international summit of European and Arab leaders aimed at shoring up the truce began in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh while officials in Cairo held talks with Hamas in a bid to consolidate the ceasefire.
Olmert announced late on Saturday that he had ordered an end to offensive operations in Gaza after 22 days of combat but added that troops would remain in the territory and would fire back if they came under fresh attack.
After the ceasefire came into effect at 2am local time, Gaza enjoyed its first bomb-free night in more than three weeks but there were soon signs that it was unravelling.
As militants fired rockets and Israel launched retaliatory air strikes, troops shot dead an eight-year-old girl in the northern town of Beit Hanun and a 20-year-old man near southern Khan Yunis, medics said.
”The government’s decision allows Israel to respond and renew the fire if our enemy in the Gaza Strip continues its strikes,” Olmert said at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem.
”This morning [Sunday] they again proved that the ceasefire is fragile and it has to be reassessed on a minute-by-minute basis,” he said. ”We hope that the fire ends. If it continues, the IDF [Israeli Defence Forces] will respond.”
Diplomatic moves
Palestinian medics took advantage of the halt in Israel’s deadliest offensive on Gaza to rush to areas that had been inaccessible due to furious fighting, pulling at least 95 bodies from the rubble, including those of several children.
The discoveries brought the overall death toll since Israel launched its Operation Cast Lead on December 27 to at least 1 300, the medics said.
On the ground, as Hamas congratulated the Palestinians on ”victory” from mosque loudspeakers, Gaza residents cautiously ventured out into the streets to survey the rubble that was once their homes.
”We congratulate all the Palestinian people after the victory in the fight with the enemy,” bellowed a voice from a Hamas mosque in central Gaza City.
On the diplomatic front, Egypt was hosting an international summit on Sunday attended by several European leaders and UN chief Ban Ki-moon.
Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian President, said on Saturday his country ”will continue its efforts as soon as there is a ceasefire to restore the truce and lift the blockade” imposed by Israel on crossing points into Gaza after Hamas seized power in the territory in June 2007.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas repeated his call for a complete withdrawal of all Israeli forces from Gaza and the reopening of the enclave’s border crossings, saying Israel’s truce was ”important and necessary but insufficient”.
Reacting to the announcement from Damascus, government spokesperson Mark Regev stressed that Israel was not a partner to any agreement with Hamas, a group which is sworn to the Jewish state’s destruction.
”If Hamas does not attack Israel and does not provoke Israel, we will honour the ceasefire,” he said. — AFP
