Hamas threatens to fight on if Israel orders unilateral ceasefire
Posted
Updated
The United Nations has called for a war crimes investigation after Israel attacked one of its schools in Gaza (AFP: Mohammed Abed )
Hamas official Osama Hemdan said that the Islamist group will fight on if Israel orders a unilateral ceasefire in Gaza.
"This unilateral ceasefire does not foresee a withdrawal" by the Israeli army, said Mr Hemdan, the movement's Lebanon representative.
"As long as it remains in Gaza, resistance and confrontation will continue."
He said that Israel's proposal for a unilateral ceasefire, which was to be put to a vote of the security cabinet later on Saturday (local time), was an "attempt to derail the Egyptian plan" for a reciprocal truce.
"If they insist on this (unilateral ceasefire) position it means that they don't want to let Egypt have success on the regional and international levels," Mr Hemdan said.
Talks were to resume in Cairo between Egyptian mediators and Hamas officials, both from Damascus and from the Gaza Strip.
A senior Egyptian official said that Egypt would pass Israel's response and its "ceasefire vision" to the Hamas delegation, the official MENA news agency said.
"Our position hasn't changed" since Wednesday, said Mr Hemdan.
"We will listen if there's something new from the Egyptians but we will not start discussing everything again from square one."
Hamas's political chief Khaled Meshaal said on Friday that his movement rejected Israel's conditions for a ceasefire.
Israel main war objective is to end Hamas and other Gaza militants' ability to fire rockets at the Jewish state, including by ending smuggling through tunnels into Gaza from Egypt.
Mr Hemdan said that one of Hamas's key conditions for a ceasefire was ending the blockade on Gaza's crossings, but that the Islamists were prepared to accept "guarantees" on their reopening.
Under the terms of the ceasefire proposal, Israeli troops would remain inside the territory for an unspecified period, an Israeli official said on condition of anonymity.
The proposal comes "following the signing of the memorandum in Washington and significant progress made in Cairo," the official said.
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Friday signed a deal with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice under which the United States will assist in preventing smuggling into Gaza from Egypt.
The Israeli official said that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert "was satisfied with the results of the talks in Cairo, which answered Israel's basic requirements for a thorough answer to Israel's demands to halt rocket fire and an agreement on coordination between Israel and Egypt on the opening of the crossings" on the Gaza border.
Mr Olmert's support does not necessarily mean that the ceasefire will be approved by the security cabinet, however, as ministers have been divided over the conduct of the war.
War crimes probe
The United Nations has called for a war crimes investigation after Israel attacked one of its schools in Gaza.
At least two children are reported to have been killed in the aerial bombardment on the northern town of Beit Lahiya.
Israel carried out at least 50 air strikes overnight, while at least four Palestinian rockets have landed in southern Israel.
The UN Relief and Works Agency takes care of Palestinian refugees, which now account for about 80 per cent of Gaza's population.
The agency's spokesman, Christopher Gunness, has called for an investigation into the attack on the UN school, where more 1,800 people have taken refuge.
"There was a slight lull, a slight pause and then minuted later there was a direct hit on one of the upper floors of the school itself," he said.
"As a result two small children were killed, 14 people were injured - amongst them their mother, who had serious injuries to both her legs."
- AFP/BBC
