MIDDLE EAST: FORMAL TRUCE BETWEEN PALESTINIANS AND ISRAELIS ROCKED BY ATTACK ON ISRAELI SETTLEMENT IN GAZA AND ISRAELI POSTPONEMENT OF A SECURITY COORDINATION AS A RESULT
Record ID:
400442
MIDDLE EAST: FORMAL TRUCE BETWEEN PALESTINIANS AND ISRAELIS ROCKED BY ATTACK ON ISRAELI SETTLEMENT IN GAZA AND ISRAELI POSTPONEMENT OF A SECURITY COORDINATION AS A RESULT
- Title: MIDDLE EAST: FORMAL TRUCE BETWEEN PALESTINIANS AND ISRAELIS ROCKED BY ATTACK ON ISRAELI SETTLEMENT IN GAZA AND ISRAELI POSTPONEMENT OF A SECURITY COORDINATION AS A RESULT
- Date: 10th February 2005
- Summary: (BN07) EREZ BORDER CROSSING, BETWEEN GAZA STRIP AND ISRAEL (FEBRUARY 10, 2005) (REUTERS) 1. CHECKPOINT FROM PALESTINIAN SIDE OF BORDER CROSSING 0.07 2. VARIOUS: PALESTINIAN LABOURERS SITTING IN LINE WAITING TO CROSS AFTER BEING REFUSED ENTRY (3 VIEWS) 0.30 3. PALESTINIAN GUARD AT CLOSED BORDER CROSSING 0.35 (BN07) GUSH KATIF JEWISH
- Embargoed: 25th February 2005 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: RAMALLAH AND JENIN, WEST BANK/ JERUSALEM/ EREZ CHECKPOINT, GAZA/GUSH KATIF JEWISH SETTLEMENT BLOC, GAZA STRIP
- City:
- Country: Palestinian Territories
- Reuters ID: LVABCCATFKKHBLK5YWMU5F9DA8O
- Story Text: Formal truce between Palestinians and Israelis
rocked by attack on Israeli settlement in Gaza and Israel
postpones security coordination with Palestinians as a
result.
A formal truce between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas looked
precarious on Thursday (February 10, 2005) as hundreds of
Palestinian labourers were denied entry into Israel despite
Sharon's promise to allow them back in and to re-establish
trade between Israel and Gaza in return for an end to
attacks on Israelis.
On the Palestinian side, gunmen rained mortar and
rocket fire into an Israeli settlement in Gush Katif
prompting Israel to postpone security coordination talks
with the Palestinians scheduled as a follow-up to Tuesday's
groundbreaking meeting between Abbas and Sharon.
Plans for Abbas and Sharon to meet again in about a
week at Sharon's desert ranch were apparently unaffected.
Hamas militants said the attacks were to avenge the
killing of a Palestinian man by Israeli army gunfire from a
settlement the day before. Soldiers said they had fired at
suspected infiltrators. Palestinians said the man was a
civilian walking near his home.
Hamas, which with other militant groups had maintained
a tacit truce for weeks to give Abbas a chance to start
negotiating for a state, insisted they were not defying him
with the mortar salvoes but only responding to Israeli
"aggression".
But they amounted to the first sustained outbreak of
shooting since the summit, and posed the first serious test
of Abbas's mettle given his promise, hailed by Israel and
chief peace broker the United States, to end violence and
talk peace.
A senior aide to Abbas accused militants of trying to
sabotage the summit's reciprocal truce declarations at the
urging of Lebanese Shi'ite Muslim movement Hizbollah.
Hizbollah and Palestinian militants have denied
operational links. Israel accuses Hizbollah of
orchestrating many attacks.
A foreign ministry spokesman, Mark Regev, accused Hamas
of trying to undermine the Palestinian leadership.
"Those groups like Hamas like Islamic Jihad who are not
interested in reconciliation who are not interested in the
peace process whose extremist ideology is opposed to any
sort of an agreement with Israel that they want to torpedo
this process from day one, they don't want to let Abu Mazen
succeed they don't want to the process, the commitments
agreed to at Sharm el Sheikh succeed. Therefore its very
very important that Abu Mazen takes some decisive action
against these groups," said Israeli Foreign Ministry
Spokesman, Mark Regev.
In Ramallah, Abbas hosted Canada's Foreign Minister
Pierre Pettigrew.
Sharon and Abbas said a lasting halt to four years of
bloodshed could kickstart talks based on a U.S.-devised
peace "road map" to a viable Palestinian state.
A permanent peace treaty remains beyond the horizon
with the two sides clinging to irreconcilable goals.
Palestinians demand total Israeli withdrawal from occupied
territories while Israel aims to quit tiny Gaza but keep
much of the larger West Bank.
But the calm needed to advance on the road map remains
tenuous because of militants' refusal to be bound by
Abbas's ceasefire proclamation, saying they were not
consulted.
In another sign of continued hairtrigger tension,
soldiers in the West Bank shot dead a Palestinian motorist
they said had ignored orders to stop at a roadblock. The
army said the car had been stolen in Israel on Wednesday.
Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie condemned both
the Israeli and the Hamas attacks.
"About the security there first of all, we do not
accept what the Israeli did about the killing in Rafah one
of the Palestinians, this will lead for (to) a reaction but
anyhow also we don't accept any kind of missile to be
against the Israeli (to be fired on the Israelis) and this
we are in consultation and we are studying this matter and
there will be a kind of measures in the Paletinians (from
the Palestinain side)," he said.
Armed militants from the Al Aqsa Brigades marched in
the West Bank of Jenin. One of its leaders said they were
committed to the ceasefire but demanded the swift release
of Palestinian prisoners.
"We are committed to a ceasefire but the Israelis need
to know that if it continues with tis policies, the policy
of wasting time and the policy of not sticking to time
tables when it comes to the release of prisoners and the
complete withdrawal from all the Palestinain cities; this
will cause a problem and will conribute towards ruining
this ceasefire," said Zakaria Zubeidi, Al Aqsa Brigades
leader in Jenin.
In return for quiet Sharon promised gestures including
prisoner releases, as well as a pullback of occupation
forces, and a readmission of Palestinian workers and
traders to Israel, the lifeline for the West Bank and Gaza
economies. Five hundred Palestinians are to be freed next
week as the first batch of a group of 900 scheduled for
release.
Abbas wants many more freed among the estimated 8,000
jailed, including gunmen serving decades-long terms for
killing Israelis, to increase his leverage over militants.
The Israeli daily Haaretz on Thursday quoted Sharon as
saying he could reverse his refusal to free prisoners "with
blood on their hands" if an evacuation of settlers and
soldiers from Gaza planned this summer goes smoothly.
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