Gaza diplomatic efforts mount as Israel presses assault & Cease Fire Efforts Gathers Pace

[Mrs. Sharon B. Hodge]

Gaza diplomatic efforts mount as Israel presses assault
by Adel Zaanoun



GAZA CITY (AFP) – Israel pressed on with its assault of the Gaza Strip on Friday, seeking to ratchet up pressure on Hamas to bow to truce efforts gathering pace in Egypt.

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Israeli tanks roll into the Gaza Strip. Israel has pressed on with its assault of the Gaza Strip, seeking … photo

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Gazans bury slain Hamas leader - video

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Indians protest Gaza - video

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Fighting rages on - video

GAZA CITY (AFP) – Israel pressed on with its assault of the Gaza Strip on Friday, seeking to ratchet up pressure on Hamas to bow to truce efforts gathering pace in Egypt.

Hamas's exiled leader Khaled Meshaal told an Arab meeting in Doha that it would not accept any ceasefire that did not provide for a full Israeli pullout and the opening of Gaza's borders, including the Rafah crossing with Egypt.

"I assure you: despite all the destruction in Gaza, we will not accept Israel's conditions for a ceasefire," he told a meeting of Arab and other leaders shortly before Hamas was invited to Cairo for a fresh round of talks.

The summit hosted by Qatar to address the Gaza war was not attended by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or the Palestinian Authority, who will hold a parallel summit of Arab leaders in Kuwait on Monday.

Israeli envoy Amos Gilad returned from Cairo after further discussions of Egypt's truce plan as Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni headed to the United States to sign an agreement on preventing arms smuggling from Egypt to Gaza.

"There are a number of conditions that need to be obtained if a ceasefire is to be durable," US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters in Washington. "Among them is to do something about the weapons smuggling."

Rice said she hoped the agreement would advance efforts to secure a ceasefire.

"There's a lot of work ahead here, but I certainly hope that we can push this to conclusion or ceasefire very, very soon."

Clamping down on the porous Gaza-Egypt border, where hundreds of underground tunnels form Hamas's main rear supply route, has been a key Israeli demand for ending the offensive that has killed more than 1,100 people in 21 days.

"We hope we're heading toward the end," government spokesman Mark Regev told AFP. "There is a lot of diplomatic activity and at the same time the military pressure on Hamas continues."

But a senior Israeli official told AFP that the government did not intend to lessen its military strikes in the impoverished territory.

A day after Israeli raids set landmark buildings ablaze in Gaza's main city, the military hammered the territory with some 40 air strikes against fighters, tunnels and a mosque suspected of being used as a weapons store, the army said.

Israeli tanks meanwhile withdrew at dawn from the Gaza City neighbourhood of Tal Al-Hawa, where heavy fighting the previous day levelled parts of the residential area and set a hospital ablaze.

At least 23 bodies were pulled from the rubble in Tal Al-Hawa and elsewhere after medics rushed to the neighbourhood.

Israel on Thursday killed Hamas interior minister Said Siam, the most senior Islamist leader killed since the start of Operation Cast Lead on December 27.

Thousands attended his funeral Friday before marching through the streets with his body draped in a green Hamas flag. "With our souls, with our blood, We sacrifice for you Abu Musaab!" they said, referring to the Hamas strongman.

The war has sparked widespread protests and on Friday the Israeli army killed a 15-year-old Palestinian teenager on the sidelines of a demonstration in the West Bank town of Hebron, medics said.

At least 1,145 Palestinians have been killed and another 5,160 wounded in the Israeli onslaught, according to Gaza medics. Some 600 civilians have been slain, including 355 children, they said.

On the Israeli side, 10 soldiers and three civilians have been killed as a result of combat or rocket fire.

Israel says its offensive is intended to stop the rockets but Gaza militants have continued the fire on southern Israel, launching more than 700 rockets and mortar rounds during the assault, including at least 15 fired on Friday alone.

Hamas, which seized control of Gaza in June 2007 in a violent coup that ousted forces loyal to the Western-backed Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, wants to be represented at Gaza's Rafah border crossing with Egypt.

Israel however has demanded that the border be monitored by Abbas's forces, and has rejected the Hamas proposal for a year-long renewable ceasefire, according to an Israeli diplomatic source close to the Egyptian talks.

Russia, which is one of the few world powers to have dealings with Hamas, has urged the group's chief backers Iran and Syria to pressure it to accept the Egyptian-brokered truce plan.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in a speech to the Qatar summit, called for the prosecution of Israeli leaders by the international court of justice for "crimes" against the Palestinians.

The offensive has prompted fears of a humanitarian crisis in one of the world's most densely populated territories where the vast majority of the 1.5 million population depends on foreign aid.

IDF Officer uses Hamas terrorist as shield vs grenade (CQB)
Had to add the translation again as it wasnt part of the video file.
"Soldiers from the IDF Golani Infantry Division get ambushed by terrorists and respond by killing them."

You don't expect to see anything like this anywhere other than in the movies. Fair play to the IDF soldier, takes some guts to do that. Speaking of which I'd imagine there is a fair amount spread over the desert after that grenade went off.


Rocket Attack Threatens Israel's Other Front

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Gaza edges closer to a cease-fire as talks continue

SPEAKING OF HAMAS ceasefire

Inside Story - Ending the War on Gaza

Inside Story - Gaza truce talks - 16 Jan 09 - Part 1

Inside Story - Gaza truce talks - 16 Jan 09 - Part 2

Listening Post - Egyptian media on Gaza - 16 Jan 09 - Part 1

Listening Post - Egyptian media on Gaza - 16 Jan 09 - Part 2


Gaza ceasefire efforts gather pace
By Nidal al-Mughrabi

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Israel troops in Gaza - slideshow

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Frances's Jews and Muslims feels impact of Gaza - video

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Hamas minister buried - video

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A Palestinian prepares a grave for his cousin, killed during Israel's offensive in Gaza, at Sheikh Redwan … - photo

GAZA (Reuters) – Israel said its Gaza offensive could be "in the final act" on Friday amid other signs that a ceasefire could be in the offing to end three weeks of fighting in which more than 1,100 Palestinians have been killed.

However, Israel rebuffed at least two elements of the truce conditions offered by Hamas, and again bombarded the Gaza Strip after a relative lull in the fighting with Islamist militants.

In Doha, Hamas's exiled leader Khaled Meshaal told Arab leaders his group would not accept Israeli ceasefire conditions and would fight on until Israel ended hostilities.

He urged participants at an Arab meeting on Gaza to cut all ties with the Jewish state, a call echoed by Syria and Iran.

Qatar and Mauritania later said they had frozen political and economic ties with Israel.

In another sign of the anger the Gaza onslaught has provoked in the Muslim world, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said Israel should be barred from U.N. headquarters for ignoring a U.N. ceasefire resolution.

The inauguration of new President Barack Obama on Tuesday is seen by some as a deadline for Israel to bow to mounting international pressure and call off its attacks.

"FINAL ACT"

"Hopefully we're in the final act," Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's spokesman Mark Regev said of ceasefire efforts.

Olmert, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak may sign an agreement as early as Sunday that could underpin a proposed truce, Western officials said.

It was not immediately clear what that agreement would entail, but the officials said it would likely include security arrangements for Gaza's borders with Egypt and Israel, which both want Abbas's forces to reassert control at key crossings.

Israel refuses to deal directly with Hamas. Israeli political sources said the government was considering a unilateral ceasefire and withdrawal that would ignore Hamas's demands for an end to its punitive blockade of the enclave.

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, asked if Israel should end fighting unilaterally, told Channel 10 television: "The security cabinet will convene to make the decision."

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, visiting the region, may attend any ceremony in Cairo, the Western officials said.

"It is time now to even think about a unilateral ceasefire," Ban said in Ramallah before heading to Ankara.

Gazans savored some respite a day after fierce combat that some had seen as a final Israeli push before a ceasefire.

But Israeli strikes intensified later in the day, killing 22 Gazans. Among them were fighters, including an Islamic Jihad commander in the southern town of Khan Younis, and civilians.

Israeli tank fire hit the home of a Hamas militant, killing his wife and five children, in the central Gaza Strip, medical officials said. The militant was not there at the time.

At least 15 rockets and mortar rounds landed in Israel from Gaza, the army said, wounding five civilians. Such attacks have dwindled during the war, which Israel launched on December 27 with the declared aim of crippling Hamas's rocket-firing capacity.

Ten Israeli soldiers and three civilians have been killed in the campaign.

Medics taking advantage of a "humanitarian pause" in Gaza said they had recovered 23 bodies from areas of the city hardest hit during Thursday's intense fighting.

Chanting crowds attended the funeral of a top Hamas leader, Saeed Seyyam, killed in an Israeli air strike along with nine other people. Seyyam was the interior minister in Gaza's unrecognized government and leader of 13,000 armed security men.

About 45,000 Gazans fleeing battle zones have taken refuge in U.N.-run schools in the enclave, U.N. officials said.

SECURITY PACT

Livni, who flew overnight to Washington, signed a security pact with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice aimed at cutting off Hamas arms supplies.

Under the deal, Israeli officials said, the United States would lead a campaign with its NATO allies to interdict weapons shipments bound for Gaza from Iran and elsewhere.

Preventing Hamas from rearming is Israel's main condition for any truce.

"Together the steps that we and other members of the international community can take will contribute to a durable ceasefire," Rice said, without saying when a truce might start.

Senior Israeli official Amos Gilad briefed Defense Minister Ehud Barak after holding more ceasefire talks in Cairo, the Defense ministry said. Hamas negotiators are due to meet the Egyptians on Saturday to discuss the Israeli response.

Hamas and diplomatic sources said on Thursday that Hamas had offered a one-year, renewable truce on condition that all Israeli forces withdrew within five to seven days and that all the border crossings with Israel and Egypt would be opened.

Except for limited humanitarian supplies, the crossings have been all but closed under an Israeli-led blockade since Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007 from Abbas's forces. Hamas had won a Palestinian parliamentary election the previous year.

Israeli forces have killed 1,150 people and wounded about 5,100 during the Gaza war, the Hamas-run Health Ministry said.


(Additional reporting by Adam Entous in Jerusalem; writing by Alistair Lyon, editing by Mark Trevelyan)