Mediators worked against the clock yesterday to extend a truce between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza, as the three-day ceasefire went into its final 24 hours.
Israel said it was ready to agree to an extension as Egyptian mediators pursued talks with Israelis and Palestinians on ending a war that has devastated the Hamas-ruled enclave. Palestinians want an Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza to be lifted and prisoners held by Israel to be freed.
“Indirect talks are ongoing and we still have today to secure this,” an Egyptian official said when asked whether the truce was likely to go beyond Friday.
“Egypt’s aims are to stabilise and extend the truce with the agreement of both sides and to begin negotiations towards a permanent agreement to cease fire and ease border restrictions.”
The Palestinian delegation was scheduled to meet Egyptian intelligence officials late last night.
After a month of bitter fighting, the two sides are not meeting face to face.
An Israeli official said late on Wednesday that Israel “has expressed its readiness to extend the truce under its current terms” beyond Friday morning's expiry of the three-day deal, which took effect on Tuesday and has so far held.
A senior Hamas official told supporters at a Gaza City rally yesterday that the war with Israel won't be over until the group's demands for a lifting of the Gaza blockade are met, insisting that its fighters would never give up their arms.
“Our fingers are on the trigger and our rockets are trained at Tel Aviv,” the official, Mushir al-Masri said, as Egypt struggled to broker a lasting truce between Israel and Hamas, with an Egyptian official saying that Gaza-based militants were refusing to compromise.
Cairo is mediating indirect talks between Israel and Hamas on extending a 72-hour cease-fire that expires this morning. Hamas has demanded the lifting of an Israeli and Egyptian blockade imposed on the coastal territory after the Islamist group came to power in 2007.
Israel has said the militants must disarm first, which al-Masri insisted was out of the question.
“The war is not over yet. Our men are still in the field, manning forward positions, our fingers are on the trigger, and our rockets are trained on Tel Aviv, and Lod and beyond,” he told several thousand supporters in the first mass rally since the fighting began on July 8.
“It is out of the question that the weapons of the resistance should be on the negotiating table. They have not been put on the table, and God willing, they will never be.”
Al-Masri insisted fighters were “in good shape” despite the nearly month-long war and still had tunnels extending into Israel that could be used for attacks if Hamas' demands were not met.
The Egyptian security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media, said the Palestinian delegation's stance had hardened after the arrival in Cairo of Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders from the Gaza Strip.
He said Azzam al-Ahmad, the leader of the delegation and the representative of Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, had threatened to withdraw from the talks if the two militant groups do not show more “flexibility,” adding that the delegation, which was supposed to leave Cairo on Thursday, would stay through the weekend.
Palestinian delegates could not immediately be reached for comment.
On July 8 Israel launched a massive air assault on the territory and nine days later it sent in ground troops.
Nearly 1,900 Palestinians have been killed in the fighting, three-quarters of them civilians, according to the United Nations. Sixty-four Israeli soldiers and three civilians inside Israel have also been killed.