ISRAEL/WEST BANK: UN and Red Cross leaders visit Israel as ceasefire talks gather steam

Record ID: 401333

  • Title: ISRAEL/WEST BANK: UN and Red Cross leaders visit Israel as ceasefire talks gather steam
  • Date: 16th January 2009
  • Summary: RAMALLAH, WEST BANK (JANUARY 15, 2009) (REUTERS) EXTERIOR OF PALESTINIAN PRESIDENTIAL "MUQATA" COMPOUND PALESTINIAN FLAG PALESTINIAN PRESIDENT MAHMOUD ABBAS ARRIVING AND ENTERING BUILDING VARIOUS OF MEETING BETWEEN ABBAS AND JAPAN'S SPECIAL ENVOY TO THE MIDDLE EAST TATSUO ARIMA (SOUNDBITE) (English) CHIEF AIDE TO PALESTINIAN PRESIDENT MAHMOUD ABBAS, SAEB EREKAT SAYING:
  • Embargoed: 31st January 2009 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: War / Fighting,International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVA9MWIQ69R0T8CDOWNZI3I3FZ11
  • Story Text: United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and International Committee of the Red Cross President Jakob Kellengberger are among several international officials who meet with Israeli leaders. Meanwhile, a senior aid to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says the Palestinian Authority will only return to Gaza under Palestinian reconciliation and not as Israel's proxy, while hundreds more take to the streets of Ramallah in the West Bank to rally against Israel's now 20-day-long military operation into the coastal enclave.
    A string of senior foreign diplomats, led by the United Nations' Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, met Israeli leaders on Thursday (January 15) in a bid to secure a truce between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
    The diplomats' visits came just as Israeli forces pushed deeper into Gaza city on Thursday and unleashed their heaviest shelling of its crowded neighbourhoods in three weeks of war, stepping up pressure on Hamas as the Islamist group weighed a ceasefire.
    The U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said its compound, where up to 700 Palestinians were sheltering, was struck twice by Israeli fire and three staff members were wounded.
    The violence has killed more than a thousand Palestinians and thirteen Israelis since it began on December 27.
    Ban said the death toll was "unbearable".
    "Civilian suffering has reached an unbearable point. That is why I have urged an immediate, and durable and fully respected ceasefire. This is what Security Council Resolution 1860 calls for. The rockets must stop, and Israel's offensive must end. All violence must cease, and the bloodshed and suffering among the civilian populations must be halted," Ban said.
    Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said Hamas was using civilians as "human shields".
    "Unfortunately, as we can see, they are using these civilians as human shields. They are targeting Israel from highly populated places. And at the end of the day, even though we try to avoid civilian casualties, these things happen, but we also take into consideration in our discussion today the need to give more aid - humanitarian aid, and we are working, and we are going to work together with the United Nations and other international partners in order to ease the humanitarian situation as far as we can because this is not a conflict between peoples. This is a war against terror that - expressing the right of Israel to defend itself, and its citizens," Livni said.
    The Palestinian death toll from the air-and-ground offensive has risen to at least 1,055, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza. A Palestinian rights group said 670 of the dead were civilians. Thirteen Israelis have been killed -- 10 soldiers and three civilians hit by Hamas rocket fire.
    A senior Western diplomat said Israel appeared to be trying to make last-minute gains on the ground before a truce could be imposed to end an offensive it began on Dec. 27 with the declared aim of ending Hamas rocket attacks.
    Political analysts see a possible deadline for the fighting in Tuesday's inauguration of Barack Obama as U.S. president, after which Israel may be reluctant to test White House support for a campaign that has stirred international outrage.
    Saeb Erekat, chief aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said on Thursday (January 15) that the Palestinian Authority would not return to Gaza under any agreement which fell short of full Palestinian reconciliation.
    Hamas, which has backing from Israel's enemies in Iran and Syria and which won a parliamentary election in 2006, is bitterly at odds with Abbas, who has sought to negotiate a peace deal with Israel.
    The schism between the two Palestinian factions has dimmed prospects for a deal to create a Palestinian state and end 60 years of conflict. Unlike Abbas, Hamas refuses to accept the existence of Israel, though it has previously offered a long-term truce.
    Erekat called on Israeli forces to leave the area immediately and to cease all fire.

    "The Egyptians are still exerting every possible effort in order to achieve the objective -- their objective and our objective is to have an immediate cessation of Israeli attacks and aggression in Gaza. That's number one. I think it must be finalized immediately. We must have a blanket cessation of Israeli attacks, a blanket ceasefire in Gaza," Erekat told Reuters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

    "The only way that we will go back to Gaza as a Palestinian Authority is through Palestinian national reconciliation, it's through the formation of a Palestinian government of national consensus. We will not go back to Gaza as a result of an Israeli aggression or an Israeli tank," he added.
    Erekat's comments on Thursday came as Abbas was meeting inside his presidential compound in Ramallah with Tatsuo Arima, Japan's special envoy to the Middle East.
    On Thursday hundreds marched and chanted in Ramallah, waving photographs of children in Gaza who have been wounded and killed in the conflict.
    Political analysts see a possible deadline for the fighting in Tuesday's (January 20) inauguration of Barack Obama as U.S. president, after which Israel may be reluctant to test White House support for a campaign that has stirred international outrage.
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