GAZA/CAIRO (Reuters) - Mediators worked
against the clock on Thursday to extend a Gaza truce between Israel and
the Palestinians as the three-day ceasefire went into its final 24
hours.
Israel has said it is ready to agree to an extension as Egyptian
mediators pursued talks with Israelis and Palestinians on an
enduring end to a war that devastated the Hamas-ruled enclave, while
Palestinians want an Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza to be lifted
and prisoners held by Israel to be freed.
“Indirect talks are ongoing and we still have today to secure this,”
an Egyptian official said when asked whether the truce was likely to
go beyond Friday.
“Egypt’s aims are to stabilise and extend the truce with the
agreement of both sides and to begin negotiations towards a
permanent agreement to cease fire and ease border restrictions.”
After a month of bitter fighting, the two sides are not meeting face
to face.
Gaza officials say the war has killed 1,874 Palestinians, most of
them civilians. Israel says 64 of its soldiers and three civilians
have been killed since fighting began on July 8, after a surge in
Palestinian rocket salvoes into Israel.
An Israeli official said late on Wednesday that Israel "has
expressed its readiness to extend the truce under its current terms"
beyond Friday morning's deadline for the three-day deal that took
effect on Tuesday and has so far held.
But a Hamas leader based in Cairo, Moussa Abu Marzouk, said: “If
there had been an opportunity for peace, it was lost with the
remains of our children and the rubble of our homes."
A Hamas source said the group's military wing was ready to resume
fighting once the truce ended unless its demands were met.
A Hamas refusal to extend the truce could further alienate Egypt,
whose government has been hostile to the Islamist group and which
ultimately controls Gaza's main gateway to the world, the Rafah
border crossing.
Earlier a senior official with the Islamist movement's armed wing
threatened to quit the talks without progress towards achieving its
demands to lift a Gaza blockade and free prisoners held by Israel.
Israel has resisted those demands.
Israel's armed forces chief, Lieutenant-General Benny Gantz, said
that if Hamas broke the truce, Israel would use "whatever force
necessary to ensure the security of Israeli citizens".
Finance Minister Yair Lapid, accusing Hamas of threatening to
"restart the fire", told Reuters Israel's armed forces were ready to
respond with "very heavy fire".
Israel withdrew ground forces from Gaza on Tuesday shortly before
the 72-hour truce started at 8 a.m. (0500 GMT).
It showed signs of expecting the truce to last by lifting official
emergency restrictions on civilians living in Israel's south near
Gaza, permitting more public activities and urging everyone to
resume their routines.
In Gaza, where some half-million people have been displaced by a
month of bloodshed, some residents left U.N. shelters to return to
neighbourhoods devastated by Israeli shelling.
President Barack Obama, backing efforts to broker a durable
ceasefire, called for a longer-term solution that provides for
Israeli security while offering Gaza residents hope they will not be
permanently cut off from the world.
While condemning Hamas for launching rockets against Israel from
population centres, Obama urged an eventual formula to ease the
hardships of ordinary Palestinians.
"Long term, there has to be a recognition that Gaza cannot sustain
itself permanently closed off from the world and incapable of
providing some opportunity - jobs, economic growth - for the
population that lives there," Obama said in Washington.
An Israeli official who declined to be identified said Israel wanted
humanitarian aid to flow to Gaza's 1.8 million inhabitants as soon
as possible.
But, the official said, the import of cement - vital for
reconstruction - would depend on achieving guarantees that it would
not be used by militants to construct more infiltration tunnels
leading into Israel and other fortifications.
Efforts to achieve a lasting truce could prove difficult, with the
sides far apart on their central demands, and each rejecting the
other's legitimacy. Hamas rejects Israel's existence and vows to
destroy it, while Israel denounces Hamas as a terrorist group and
refuses any contact.
(Additional reporting by Ali Sawafta in Ramallah, Allyn Fisher-Ilan
and Ori Lewis in Jerusalem and Maggie Fick in Cairo; Writing by
Giles Elgood in Jerusalem; Editing by Jeffrey Heller)
Israel has said it is ready to agree to an extension as Egyptian
mediators pursued talks with Israelis and Palestinians on an
enduring end to a war that devastated the Hamas-ruled enclave, while
Palestinians want an Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza to be lifted
and prisoners held by Israel to be freed.
