Palestinians warn Israeli strike threatens truce
AFP
Date: 05-30-05
GAZA CITY (AFP) - Palestinian factions warned that a de-facto Middle East truce was in jeopardy after Israel launched an aerial strike against militants, wounding two sisters in the Gaza Strip.
In the hours after the attack, the radical Islamist movement Hamas, although it has signed up to the truce, rejected a call from Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas to renounce violence.
"Peace agreements will only bring further losses and push back our cause," said spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri, pointing out that Abbas's Fatah party also maintains its own armed wing, the loosely affiliated Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.
"Israel's escalation makes the truce empty. We affirm the right to avenge this crime and to self-defence. We ask the international community to intervene to stop this aggression," he told AFP.
Sunday's incident was the second aerial attack in the occupied territory in two weeks, with Israel repeatedly accusing Abbas of failing to crack down on militants, putting serious pressure on the de facto truce.
But the Palestinian Authority condemned Israel for exacerbating the cycle of violence.
"Israel should keep the truce on both sides because the truce is in the interests of both parties to continue," chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat told AFP.
Abbas -- who has faced down a gauntlet of Israeli criticism for not using force to crush militants -- said the time had come for Hamas to renounce violence and enter into dialogue with Fatah.
"The climate right now is ready for political negotiations," said Abbas, speaking through an interpreter to ABC television in the United States.
Some Fatah officials have accused Hamas of partly engineering the recent spike in violence in Gaza as part of a dispute with Fatah over local elections earlier this month and parliamentary polls scheduled for July.
The violence has brought calls from Israeli army officers for the government to delay its planned August withdrawal from the Gaza Strip after almost four decades of occupation.
But Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said Monday that a meeting between Abbas and Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon meeting could be held "in a very short time" to discuss the withdrawal.
"It might take place in a very short time, in a few weeks," said Shalom, speaking at an EU-Mediterranean conference in Luxembourg. "If it would take place, I think it would take place maybe in Jerusalem."
Shalom said the talks would have the aim "to coordinate the implementation of this disengagement plan".
But one senior Israeli official threatened Sunday that Israel would re-occupy parts of Gaza and send troops into Palestinian cities if Palestinian security forces fail to prevent attacks on Israeli soldiers during the pullout.
"We need to take preventative measures to make the withdrawal possible. One of those measures could see us enter and occupy Khan Yunis to secure the pullout," said Giora Eiland, the head of Israel's National Security Council.
An Israeli military source said Sunday's attack near Jabaliya in northern Gaza targeted two rocket launchers on the outskirts of the sprawling refugee camp that two Palestinian militants were preparing to activate.
"The object of the raid was to prevent rocket fire and apart from those two men, who were not hurt in the attack, no one else appeared to be in the area," said the source.
Palestinian medical sources said the two victims, sisters aged 19 and 32, were in a serious condition.
A spokesman for the armed wing of Islamic Jihad said militants fired two shells at a Jewish settlement in the area before the Israeli drone fired three rockets in their direction and the activists managed to escape.
Source
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