GAZA, June 29: Israel began a troop pullback in Gaza on Sunday and three leading Palestinian militant groups declared a three-month suspension of attacks on Israelis in breakthroughs for a US-backed peace plan.
Witnesses said Israeli armour rumbled out of the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun towards the Israeli border as part of a withdrawal from areas reoccupied in the Gaza Strip during a 33-month-old Palestinian uprising for statehood.
US presidential adviser Condoleeza Rice met both sides on the peace plan as Washington welcomed the truce by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction, including its al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades military wing.
“Anything that reduces violence is a step in the right direction,” said White House spokesman Ashley Snee, but added “terrorist infrastructures” must be dismantled under the plan.
Israel dismissed the ceasefire, which carried a long list of conditions, as a “ticking bomb”. A truce would give the groups time to restrengthen, it said.
But Israel’s attacks on militants seemed likely to be curtailed under the Gaza Strip pullback deal with the Palestinian Authority, a major step towards putting the peace “road map” into motion.
Israel said it would start withdrawing forces from occupied areas of northern Gaza in return for Palestinian police assuming security control and preventing militant attacks on Israelis.
For the first time in two years, Palestinian security officers toured the Gaza Strip with their Israeli counterparts to prepare the pullback.
Ms Rice held talks on Saturday with Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and on Sunday with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad said in a statement: “We, the factions of the Palestinian resistance...declare the following initiative...the suspension of military operations against the Zionist enemy for three months.... This initiative goes into effect from today.”
CONDITIONAL CEASEFIRE: : The truce was conditional on a “total cessation of all forms of Zionist aggression”, including Israeli military incursions, closures around Palestinian cities, a siege around Arafat’s presidential compound and “assassinations”.
“If this does not stop, it will be considered a violation of this truce...and then we will respond to Zionist aggression by all means available to us,” said Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi, a Hamas leader wounded in an Israeli assassination attempt on June 10.
The radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine has not signed up to the ceasefire.
Despite Israel’s dismissal of the truce, security sources said it would cease lightning incursions and dismantle military checkpoints in Gaza, which have paralysed Palestinian life.
In Egypt, which has been involved in peace brokering efforts, a government source said: “This three months is a test of everybody’s will.
“It will give the Israelis enough time to withdraw from some areas of the occupied territories and it will give the United States and the international community the chance to move ahead with the peace process,” the source said.
Syria, which has traditionally backed Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation, signalled support for the peace bid.
“Let’s give some hope to the road map, to the peace process,” Foreign Minister Farouq al-Shara told reporters.—Reuters
Dear visitor, the comments section is undergoing an overhaul and will return soon.