A tense calm reigned over the Gaza Strip on Tuesday as Hamas said it may agree to a new truce with Israel.
Gaza’s Islamic Movement were holding their fire and Israeli forces were not carrying out raids on the territory after Hamas announced on Monday that it would not launch rockets or fire mortars for 24 hours.
Senior Hamas leader Mahmud Zahar told AFP that the movement could consider extending the temporary lull and agreeing to a new long-term truce, following the expiry on Friday of a six-month ceasefire.
Hamas is ready to renew the truce "if Israel respects the conditions of a ceasefire," he said.
These include lifting the blockade of the Palestinian enclave and stopping military raids on the besieged territory.
"We demand that Israel respect truce conditions… in particular that it stop all form of aggression and open the border crossings," said Zahar.
His comments came two days before Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is due to travel to Cairo for talks on the situation in Gaza with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
However Egyptian security sources warn that Hamas’s efforts to ‘haggle over’ another truce risks the possibility of having one.
"They are haggling with ceasefire in order to improve its conditions, but we believe their calculations are wrong as neither the time, nor haggling will be fruitful. We know in advance their attempts will be doomed to fail," an unnamed Egyptian security official told the Saudi daily newspaper Al Medina.
Egypt mediated the six-month ceasefire that has just ended. The truce’s expiry on Friday ushered in two days of escalating violence and bellicose rhetoric.
Hamas’s announcement coincides with Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas’s Tuesday visit to Cairo, where Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has launched bilateral meetings with Israelis and Palestinian factions in an attempt to mediate a new ceasefire agreement.
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is scheduled to visit Cairo on Thursday to meet with her Egyptian counterpart, Ahmad Abu al-Gheit, spokesman Husam Zaki told AlArabiya.net.
On Monday Livni said that Israel should carry out a military and economic response to homemade projectiles launched from Gaza at southern Israeli targets.
As the Israeli military carried out air strikes and a crippling blockade on Gaza and Palestinian fighters fired mostly ineffective rockets, Israel threatened to launch a major offensive on Gaza and Hamas warned that it would respond by resuming suicide attacks inside the Jewish state.
The overcrowded and aid-dependent land of some 1.5 million people has been subject to Israeli blockade and repeated raids since 2006, when Hamas won parliamentary elections and later participated in a deadly cross-border raid in which Islamists seized an Israeli soldier, who is still being held.
Israel cut off much movement of goods and people in and out of the territory in June 2007 after Hamas seized Gaza by ousting forces loyal to Mahmud Abbas.
Aid groups have repeatedly appealed to Israel to lift its restrictions — which at times have seen Gaza sealed off completely — to avoid a humanitarian crisis in the overcrowded territory where most of the population depends on foreign aid.
Coming less than two months before snap elections set for February, the latest developments around Gaza pose a dilemma for the Israeli leadership.
In public comments, officials have called for major military action in response to continuing rocket fire and have vowed to topple Hamas.
But in private there is little enthusiasm for a major offensive, for fear that voters will punish politicians at the ballot box if a military operation fails to score a decisive victory against Hamas, observers say.
(Agencies)
