Israel Rejects Truce With Hamas
Pastor Dale Morgan
Israel Rejects Truce With Hamas*
By MARK LAVIE,
Associated Press Writer
JERUSALEM - Israel's prime minister pledged Sunday to continue attacking
Gaza militants, ruling out truce negotiations with Hamas amid widespread
skepticism about the Islamic group's ability to halt rocket attacks.
An Israeli cabinet minister, meanwhile, angered moderate Palestinians
with another plan for new Jewish housing in a disputed part of
Jerusalem, complicating renewed peace talks.
There have been almost daily reports of truce feelers from the embattled
Islamic Hamas regime in Gaza, and Israeli defense officials have said
they are examining the proposals.
But at the weekly cabinet meeting Sunday, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
rejected negotiations with Hamas because it has rebuffed international
demands that it recognize Israel, renounce violence and endorse past
peace accords.
"There is no other way to describe what is happening in the Gaza Strip
except as a true war between the Israeli army and terrorist elements,"
Olmert told his cabinet, ruling out truce talks.
The truce feelers started surfacing last week after two days of Israeli
airstrikes killed 12 people, including two top commanders of the
militant Islamic Jihad group. The first came through a call from Hamas
political leader Ismail Haniyeh to an Israeli TV reporter and later, by
way of Egypt, which has mediated several other past truces.
Hamas has offered to persuade fellow militants in Gaza to stop their
daily rocket fire if Israel halts its air and ground operations in the
coastal strip.
But Israel doubts whether Hamas has either the will or the ability to
force the other militants to stop firing rockets.
Islamic Jihad is behind most of the rocket salvos, and on Sunday, the
group again rejected a truce with Israel. By nightfall, four rockets
fired from Gaza exploded in Israel, one damaging a factory near the
southern city of Ashkelon, the military said.
"We have declared (this war) and we will continue," Olmert said at the
start of the cabinet meeting, which was open to the media. "This is true
regarding Hamas, Islamic Jihad and all other elements."
Despite their overt rejections of a formal cease-fire, Israeli officials
have been saying a formal truce is unnecessary. They say if Gaza
militants stop the rocket fire, Israel would have no reason to attack.
Israeli officials said Defense Minister Ehud Barak will travel this week
to Egypt for talks with President Hosni Mubarak. It was unclear whether
a cease-fire would be on the agenda.
Also Sunday, Israel allocated $207 million over five years to develop a
system, with the U.S., to shoot down missiles such as the ones fired
from Gaza or during last year's war against Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon.
After Hamas overran Gaza in June, expelling forces loyal to moderate
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Israel and Egypt closed their
borders with Gaza, further worsening the critical economic situation there.
In parallel, the West began promoting the rival Abbas government in the
West Bank, renewing aid cut off after Hamas won a 2006 election.
At Mideast conference hosted by President Bush last month in Annapolis,
Md., Israel and the Palestinians resumed peace talks for the first time
in seven years.
But disputes over Israeli construction in Jerusalem have harmed the
atmosphere. Just before the talks restarted, Israel announced a plan to
build 307 apartments in Har Homa in east Jerusalem, which Israel
captured in the 1967 Mideast war and annexed.
The international community never recognized Israeli sovereignty over
east Jerusalem, and Palestinians claim the area as the capital of the
state they want to create.
On Sunday Rafi Eitan, minister for Jerusalem affairs, confirmed that the
Construction Ministry's proposed budget for 2008 includes 500 new
apartments for Har Homa, as well as 240 new apartments in Maaleh Adumim,
a major West Bank settlement just outside Jerusalem.
Eitan told Army Radio that Israel never promised to halt construction
within the municipal borders of Jerusalem. Eitan called both areas
"integral" parts of Jerusalem.
Olmert spokesman Mark Regev said he was "not aware" of the plan to
expand Har Homa and said there was "no new decision" for additional
construction in Maaleh Adumim.
Abbas charged that the construction projects undermined new peace efforts.
"The negotiations are facing obstacles," Abbas told members of his Fatah
Party. "We can't understand these settlement activities at a time we're
talking about final status negotiations."