[July 15, 2014]By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Dan Williams
GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Palestinian
militants fired rockets at Israel on Tuesday after it agreed to an
Egyptian proposal to end the week-old Gaza conflict, and a Hamas leader
said the Islamist group was still undecided on whether to accept the
ceasefire.
Under the terms of the blueprint announced by Egypt - whose
military-backed government has been at odds with Hamas - a mutual
"de-escalation" of fighting was to begin at 9 a.m. (2 a.m. EDT),
with hostilities ceasing within 12 hours.
Rocket salvoes were fired at Israel after 9 a.m. and live television
showed the Iron Dome anti-missile system intercepting several
projectiles over the port city of Ashdod, where a factory was hit.
Emergency services said no one was hurt.
Sirens sounded in other parts of southern Israel after what Channel
Two television reported had been volleys of at least 10 rockets.
Israel said it had halted its attacks in the Gaza Strip but would
respond strongly if Palestinian strikes persisted.
At Israeli military headquarters in Tel Aviv, Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu's security cabinet approved the Egyptian offer,
an official statement said. Political sources said the vote in the
forum was 6-2.
Hamas's armed wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, rejected the reported
text of the deal announced by Egypt, Gaza's neighbor, saying: "Our
battle with the enemy continues and will increase in ferocity and
intensity."
But Moussa Abu Marzouk, a top Hamas official who was in Cairo, said
the movement had made no final decision.
"We are still in consultation and there has been no official
position made by the (Hamas) movement regarding the Egyptian
proposal," Moussa Abu Marzouk, who was in Cairo, said in a Facebook
posting.
Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza, said earlier on Tuesday
that the Islamist group had not received an official ceasefire
proposal, and he repeated its position that demands it has made must
be met before it lays down its weapons.
Amos Gilad, a senior Israeli defense official and envoy to Cairo,
said Hamas had been weakened by the air and sea bombardment of Gaza
that medical officials in the densely populated enclave said has
killed at least 184 people, many of them civilians. "Look at the
balance, and you see that Hamas tried every possible means of
striking at Israel," Gilad told Israel's Army Radio. Hundreds of
rocket attacks on Israel have caused no fatalities, largely due to
Iron Dome. But the strikes have disrupted life across the country
and sent people rushing into shelters.
Israel had mobilized tens of thousands of troops for a threatened
Gaza invasion if the rocket salvoes persisted in the worst flare-up
of Israeli-Palestinian hostilities in two years.
"We still have the possibility of going in, under cabinet authority,
and putting an end to them (the rockets)," Gilad said.
In overnight attacks, Israel said it had bombed 25 sites in Gaza.
Palestinian medical officials said a 63-year-old man and a
52-year-old woman were killed.
CEASEFIRE TERMS
Under the ceasefire proposal announced by Egypt's Foreign Ministry,
high-level delegations from Israel and the Palestinian factions
would hold separate talks in Cairo within 48 hours to consolidate
the ceasefire with "confidence-building measures".
The surge in hostilities over the past week was prompted by the
murder last month of three Jewish seminary students in the occupied
West Bank and the revenge killing on July 2 of a Palestinian youth
in Jerusalem. Israel said on Monday three Jews in police custody had
confessed to killing the Palestinian.
Hamas leaders have said a ceasefire must include an end to Israel's
blockade of Gaza and a recommitment to a truce reached in an
eight-day war there in 2012. Hamas also wants Egypt to ease
restrictions at its Rafah crossing with Gaza imposed after the
military toppled Islamist president Mohamed Mursi last July.
The Egyptian proposal made no mention of Rafah or when restrictions
might be eased. It said only that "crossings shall be opened and the
movement of persons and goods through (them) shall be facilitated
once the security situation becomes stable on the ground".
Hamas has faced a cash crisis and Gaza's economic hardship has
deepened as a result of Egypt's destruction of cross-border
smuggling tunnels. Cairo accuses Hamas of aiding anti-government
Islamist militants in Egypt's Sinai peninsula, an allegation the
Palestinian group denies.
Hamas has said it also wants the release of hundreds of its
activists arrested in the West Bank while Israel searched for the
three missing teens. The detainees include more than 50 Hamas men
freed from Israeli jails in a 2011 prisoner exchange.
The proposed truce made no mention of the detainees in stipulating
that "other issues, including security issues, shall be discussed
with the sides".
The Arab League said in a statement it welcomed the Egyptian
initiative "to protect the lives of the innocent". Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas, who reached an agreement with Hamas in
April that led to the formation of a unity government last month,
urged acceptance of the proposal, the official Palestinian news
agency WAFA said.
(Additional reporting by Allyn Fisher-Ilan, Maayan Lubell in
Jerusalem, Noah Browning in Gaza and Michael Georgy and Yasmine
Saleh in Cairo; Writing by Jeffrey Heller and Dan Williams, editing
by John Stonestreet)
