Proposal emerges for 10-day cease-fire in Gaza

Palestinians sit on the rubble of a destroyed building after an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City, Wednesday, Jan.14, 2009. Two and a half weeks of Israel's fierce assaults on Gaza's Hamas rulers have destroyed at least $1.4 billion worth of buildings,

Regular Photo Size

Proposal emerges for
10-day cease-fire in
Gaza

Updated: Wednesday, 14 Jan 2009, 2:30 PM EST
Published : Wednesday, 14 Jan 2009, 9:29 AM EST

By SALAH NASRAWI

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Egypt and Hamas were negotiating a proposal for a 10-day cease-fire in Gaza, officials said Wednesday, as the Palestinian death toll in the war passed 1,000 and smoke from Israeli airstrikes rose over Gaza City's devastated streets.

Egyptian and Palestinian officials said they hoped to seal Hamas' agreement on a temporary halt in fighting, which would be presented to Israel for approval. Key uncertainties remained for a longer-term deal under which Gaza's borders would be open and Israeli troops would withdraw.

The officials provided details of the deal on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the Egypt-Hamas talks. But Egyptian officials also expressed public optimism that momentum toward a deal was growing.

"We're working with Hamas and we're working with the Israeli side. We hope to reach an outcome soon," Hossam Zaki, a spokesman for Egypt's Foreign Ministry, told the British Broadcasting Corp.

A Hamas spokesman said he also believed an agreement was possible.

"There is good progress in Egypt. We hope that now Egypt will contact Israel and talk about all issues," Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas adviser, told the BBC.

Asked if a negotiated settlement could also include a deal between Hamas and the rival Palestinian administration, led by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank, Hamad said he was hopeful.

"I am optimistic now because I think there is no other choice for us," he said.

In Jerusalem, a senior Defense Ministry official said Israel was sending a chief envoy to Egypt on Thursday to present Israel's stance. The senior official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. Amos Gilad's trip has been postponed for days but his presence in Egypt would be a strong signal of progress.

Egypt's foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, said details on the proposed cease-fire would be kept "under a lid of secrecy" until all parties agreed but said issues included an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, opening crossings into the blockaded territory and some kind of international monitors.

Israel showed no signs of slowing its bruising 19-day-old offensive against Gaza's Hamas rulers, striking some 60 targets. One airstrike hit an overcrowded cemetery, spreading body parts and rotting flesh over a wide area. The army said the airstrike targeted a weapons cache hidden near the graveyard.

Guerrillas in Lebanon sent rockets crashing into northern Israel on Wednesday for the second time in a week, drawing an Israeli artillery barrage and threatening to drag the Jewish state into a second front.

The rocket fire in the north caused no injuries, but sent residents scurrying to bomb shelters. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, and speculation focused on small Palestinian groups. Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed guerrilla group that fought a monthlong war with Israel in 2006, denied involvement in last week's attack.

Israel launched the onslaught in Gaza on Dec. 27, seeking to stop the ruling Hamas militant group from firing rockets into southern Israel. The offensive has killed more than 1,000 Palestinians, half of them civilians, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. The toll included 11 Palestinians killed Wednesday, medical officials said.

Thirteen Israelis have also been killed since the offensive began, four by rocket fire from Gaza.

The Muslim world has expressed outrage over Israel's Gaza offensive, and in a new condemnation Wednesday, al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden urged Muslims to launch a holy war against Israel.

Iran's top leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a religious opinion, or fatwa, declaring the purchase of any Israeli goods or trade with Israeli companies to be forbidden.

Desperately trying to end the fighting, U.N. secretary-general Ban Ki-moon opened a visit to the Mideast on Wednesday urging an immediate halt to the violence.

"My call is (for) an immediate end to violence in Gaza," he said in Cairo after meeting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

"It is intolerable that civilians bear the brunt of this conflict," he said, adding that the "negotiations need to be intensified to provide arrangements and guarantees in order to sustain an endurable cease-fire and calm." Ban is scheduled to arrive in Israel on Thursday. He will also visit Jordan, the Palestinian-controlled West Bank, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria and Kuwait. His itinerary does not include a stop in Gaza because of the ongoing conflict.

Israeli military officials have said talks in Cairo will determine whether Israel moves closer to a truce with Hamas or widens its offensive to send thousands of reservists into crowded, urban areas where casualties on both sides would likely mount.

Hamas has insisted that it would not agree to a cease-fire unless Israel pulls its troops out of the tiny Mediterranean coastal strip and allowed Gaza's borders to the outside world to immediately reopen.

But the temporary cease-fire proposal being discussed in Cairo would

allow Israel's military to stay in place and the borders closed during a 10-day period of quiet, the Egyptian and Palestinian officials close to the talks said.

During that time, Egyptian, Turkish and other international mediators would try to negotiate an arrangement for policing Egypt's border with Gaza to prevent weapons smuggling into the territory, the officials said.

This would likely entail some kind of international monitors on the Palestinian side of the border -- but the two sides remained far apart on who would make up the force, where they would be deployed and their mission.

Hamas has so far publicly resisted deploying international monitors and has demanded a role in policing the crossings and borders. Israel -- like the United States, the EU and other nations -- considers Hamas a terrorist group and has always rejected a role for it policing the crossings.

Egypt has also rejected any foreign troops on its side of the border, though it says it would accept foreign technical and financial aid to help control the border, which is riddled with smuggling tunnels.

Only after a deal has been reached on border security -- including control of the crossings -- would the crossings be opened and Israel would withdraw its forces from Gaza, the officials said.

That means negotiators potentially would have only 10 days to work out the contentious details or else risk a return to fighting.
Efforts of Arab countries to contain the crisis were riven, meanwhile, with their own divisions. Qatar on Wednesday managed to get enough Arab countries to agree on an emergency summit meeting in its capital of Doha for Friday.

Its efforts succeeded over the strong opposition of Egypt and Saudi Arabia who preferred a meeting a few days later in Kuwait on the sidelines of an economic summit.

Overnight, Israeli warplanes and helicopter gunships pounded a police court in Gaza City, rocket-launching sites, gunmen, weapons-production and storage facilities and about 35 weapons smuggling tunnels, the military said. Later in the day, witnesses in southern Gaza reported air strikes on the house of a rocket squad leader and a militant's car.

Aircraft also struck the Sheikh Radwan cemetery in Gaza City, destroying about 30 graves -- some just recently dug -- and scattering bits of flesh and body parts, residents said.

Maj. Avital Leibovich, a military spokeswoman, said the army targeted a weapons cache next to the cemetery and a nearby rocket-launching site. She said the heavy damage was the result of secondary explosions.

Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of using mosques, schools and other civilian areas to stage attacks or store weapons.

Fireballs and smoke plumes from Israeli bombing have become a common sight in the territory of 1.4 million people, who are trapped because Israel and Egypt have blockaded border crossings ever since the Islamic Hamas overran Gaza in June 2007.

Humanitarian concerns have increased amid the onslaught although some aid is reaching Gaza during daily three-hour lulls Israel has allowed to let in supplies. A total of 111 truckloads of food and medical supplies were to pass through on Wednesday, the military said.

Palestinian rocket fire has dropped off dramatically since the offensive began. Twelve rockets were fired at Israel on Wednesday, down from as many as 80 a day early in the operation. Israeli police said Hamas militants fired a phosphorus shell from the Gaza Strip into Israel for the first time. Micky Rosenfeld, a police spokesman, said the mortar shell exploded in a field near the border town of Sderot Wednesday evening. There were no casualties.

Human Rights Watch has said Israel used phosphorus shells, which illuminate targets at night or create a smoke screen for day attacks, against targets in Gaza.

Phosphorus shells can burn anything they touch and pose a threat to non-combatants if used in civilian areas. Israeli says it uses munitions in line with international law.
___

AP correspondents Ibrahim Barzak in Gaza City, Amy Teibel in Jerusalem and Sarah El Deeb in Cairo contributed to this report.