Hamas rejects Israeli cease-fire terms
E-Mail Article
Printer-Friendly
3-Column Format
Translate
Share Article
Text Size
CAIRO: As the war in Gaza entered its 21st day with the quest for an elusive truce set to resume in Cairo and Washington, a top leader of the Hamas militant group battling Israel's onslaught rejected Israel's terms for a cease-fire and urged Arab states to support its resistance.
In a speech broadcast across the Arab world and widely followed in the Middle East and elsewhere, Khaled Meshal, the senior leader in exile of Hamas, told an unusual Arab gathering in Doha, Qatar, that "I assure you: despite all the destruction in Gaza, we will not accept Israel's conditions for a cease-fire.
"We tell our loved ones in Gaza, the aggression will soon perish on the rock of your steadfastness."
Israel has long insisted that a cease-fire should be long-term and sustainable, preventing Hamas from firing rockets at Israel or rearming.
But Meshal, who is based in Damascus, told the meeting in Doha that his organization would accept a cease-fire only if Israel withdrew its forces from Gaza, lifted its blockade of Gaza and reopened border crossing points. Despite three weeks of fighting that has claimed around 1,100 Palestinian lives, he said, "resistance in Gaza has not been defeated. It has suffered harm, but it has not been defeated."
Multimedia
Related Articles
Today in Africa & Middle East
The meeting in Doha followed a call by Qatar to hold an emergency Arab summit on Gaza, but the proposal was opposed by regional powers such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, reflecting broader and profound divisions in the Arab world.
At least two other Arab meetings have already debated or will debate the Gaza question. The Arab League says the Qatar meeting does not have the necessary quorum.
Meshal made the keynote address on Friday, securing a significant platform in his rivalry with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian authority based in the West Bank city of Ramallah. In his speech Meshal said settlements with Israel in the past had not brought solutions for Palestinians' problems.
Earlier on Friday, the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki Moon, met Abbas in Ramallah and urged Israel to consider a unilateral cease-fire, a step Israel immediately labeled illogical.
Ban told a joint news conference with Abbas that a "unilateral declaration of a cease-fire would be necessary at this time" in order to halt the hostilities. "The fighting must stop," Ban said. "We have no time to lose."
Mark Regev, the spokesman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, dismissed the notion, according to news reports.
"I don't believe that there's a logical expectation in the international community that Israel unilaterally cease fire while Hamas would continue to target cities, trying to kill our people," he said.
Gaza residents said Friday that the fighting seemed less intense than on Thursday, when Israeli forces shelled the headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and other buildings in central Gaza. The strikes magnified condemnation of Israel, already heated because of the number of civilian deaths, and further strained fraught relations with the agency that provides aid to Palestinian refugees.
The strike, which Israel said was in response to enemy fire, came even as Israeli officials indicated some progress in the Egyptian-brokered cease-fire talks. The Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, left for the United States late on Thursday, seeking an internationally guaranteed mechanism to stop arms smuggling into Gaza through Egypt. At the same time, Amos Gilad, Israel's top negotiator on Gaza, returned to Cairo to continue talks with Egyptian officials.
Israel tightened the military pressure on Hamas on Thursday, perhaps to push it closer to a cease-fire. On Friday, the Israeli military said it launched 40 airstrikes overnight, hitting targets including Hamas gunmen and a mosque that Israel said was used for weapons storage.
The military also said at least three rockets were fired from Gaza into southern Israel on Friday - fewer than in recent days - without causing casualties.
Meshal's comments in Doha followed the death of a senior Hamas leader inside Gaza, Said Siam, who was killed along with his brother and his son when Israel bombed the house that they were in. Siam was the powerful interior minister of the Hamas-run government in Gaza and the overall chief of its security forces, a significant blow for Hamas days after Israel indicated that its military structure remained largely intact.
According to witnesses and hospital officials, four members of a family in a building next door to the Siams were also killed in the Israeli raid. Thursday's strike against the United Nations headquarters wounded three people, destroying with three shells a warehouse full of hundreds of tons of food and medicine, said John Ging, director of United Nations operations in the area.
Latest News
