israeli strategy is totally unreasonable, page-25

Hamas accepts EU Gaza truce offer 'under conditions'

Posted Fri Jan 2, 2009 1:07am AEDT
Updated Fri Jan 2, 2009 1:26am AEDT



The Palestinian Hamas movement said it was accepting "under conditions" an EU proposal for a ceasefire with Israel around Gaza.

"Hamas accepts this initiative on the condition that the aggression stops, that the blockade is lifted, that all the border crossings are opened and that it gets international guarantees that the occupier will not restart its terrorist war," spokesman Fawzi Barhum said in a statement.

"A ceasefire deal must be part of a global agreement including a ceasefire, the lifting of the blockade and the reopening of all the border crossings," he said.

The Rafah border terminal between Egypt and Gaza - the enclave's sole crossing that bypasses Israel - should no longer function under a restrictive 2005 agreement, he said.

The accord requires the presence at Rafah of European observers, video surveillance by Israel and representatives from President Mahmud Abbas's Palestinian Authority.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has cited the lack of EU observers and Palestinian Authority officials at Rafah since Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip in June last year as the reason his Government has not opened the crossing to allow Palestinians to flee the assault.

A statement by the European Union released after a foreign ministers meeting in Paris on Tuesday began by a demand of an "unconditional" stop to Hamas rocket attacks.

"There must be an unconditional halt to rocket attacks by Hamas on Israel and an end to Israeli military action," the EU statement said.

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni will meet with French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris today.

The visit comes just a day after the Israelis rejected a French proposal for a 48 hour ceasefire in Gaza.

Mr Sarkozy will make his own diplomatic mission to the Middle East, beginning on Monday.


Hamas leader killed

Meanwhile, a senior leader Hamas leader Nizar Rayan was killed in an Israeli air strike on its Gaza Strip stronghold, medics said.

Rayan, who was considered a hardliner within the Islamist group, was killed with at least four other people in the house that he shared with one of his four wives in Jabaliya in the north of the territory, the medics said.

Rayan is the most senior Hamas official killed since Israel unleashed its massive bombardment against the Islamists in Gaza on Saturday in response to persistent rocket fire from the enclave.

In the minutes following the strike, dozens of people rushed to the scene, pulling bodies from the rubble.

A few months after Hamas seized control of Gaza in June 2007, Rayan vowed at a Gaza City rally that the Islamists would also seize control in the Israeli-occupied West Bank which is still administered by Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas.


Aid

United Nations agency UNRWA - the biggest aid agency in the Gaza Strip - says it has resumed distributing food, despite a sixth day of Israeli airstrikes.

About 400 people have been killed since the attacks began and 100s have been injured.

Israel says its enemy is Hamas, not the people of Gaza, but most who live there feel like they are under attack.

UNRWA says food is being distributed for the first time in two weeks but hospitals are still struggling to cope.

Juliet Seebold from the charity Care International says hospital conditions are appalling.

"The conditions in the hospitals are awful. In one case opposite the main hospital a mosque was blown up which showered shards of glass into hospital wards and into the corridors," she said.

For now a ceasefire looks unlikely. Defence minister Ehud Barak said Israel would be widening and deepening its operation.

That could mean a ground offensive, but that would bring new risks for Israeli soldiers and the people of Gaza.

- AFP/BBC