Hamas offers Gaza truce with Israel
Middle East Desk Report

CAIRO—Hamas leaders handed over on Thursday proposals for a truce with Israel in the Gaza Strip, with a timetable for extending it to the West Bank, at a meeting of the Palestinian Islamist group with Egyptian mediators.
Former Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud el-Zahar and former Interior Minister Saeed Seyam held talks with Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, Egypt’s main contact with the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas and Israel, the Egyptian state news agency MENA said.
A Palestinian official close to the talks said the Hamas delegation would tell Suleiman it is prepared to accept the idea of a staged truce, starting with Gaza only. “Hamas’s position is that they agree to a calm in Gaza and the West Bank but it would begin in Gaza at this stage and then apply to the West Bank after an agreed and specified period of time,” said the official, who declined to be named.
Hamas, which controls Gaza but has prominent members resident in the West Bank, has previously insisted that a truce should begin and apply at the same time to both areas. Israel said it was ready for “quiet” at the Gaza border, but that it would require a complete halt to attacks by Hamas on Israelis, a stop to cross-border rocket fire from all Palestinian groups and an end to weapon smuggling into Gaza.
“We can’t have a period of quiet that will just be the quiet before the storm,” said Mark Regev, spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. The Palestinian official said Hamas made any truce conditional on Israel opening all of Gaza’s border crossings and halting military action in the territory.
The Islamist group had backing from other Palestinian militant factions in the enclave, he added. Egypt would relay Hamas’s proposal to Israel in the coming days, he added. Israeli officials said they were skeptical about the chances of reaching a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
“We are not holding our breath,” a senior Israeli official said. “We certainly don’t want Hamas to have an interval to get stronger.” Israel has said it is not negotiating a truce with Hamas but would have no reason to launch attacks on the Gaza Strip if rocket fire from the territory ceased. But it says it reserves the right to take military action to protect its citizens.
The Egyptian intelligence chief, who is in regular contact with the Israelis, has been trying to negotiate a truce between Israel and Hamas, especially since Palestinians broke through the border with Egypt in January to escape a long Israeli siege.
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, on a Middle East tour which ended this week, tried to persuade Hamas to declare a unilateral ceasefire with Israel. Hamas declined on the grounds that Israel had not responded to similar gestures in the past.
Dozens of Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza in the past 10 days. Three Israeli soldiers were killed on the border with Gaza on April 16.
MENA quoted a senior Egyptian official as saying that a truce would contribute to talks between Israel and the rival Fatah movement of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, as well as to reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas wants the Bush administration to press Israel to stop expanding Jewish settlements in the West Bank — a step he says is needed to make progress in Mideast peace talks.
Those talks are bogged down five months after both sides pledged to reach a deal by January. In a meeting Wednesday with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice ahead of talks with President Bush on Thursday, Abbas said time was running out if that target laid out at the Annapolis Conference in November was to be met and that more pressure must be exerted on Israel to stop the expansion of West Bank settlements, according to the chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat.