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TEL AVIV, July 29: The head of the Israeli parliament’s foreign and defence committee said on Monday that it was possible that Israel’s deadly raid on Gaza City last week derailed a ceasefire being planned by the Palestinians.
Labour deputy Haim Ramon presented the committee with a text of a ceasefire call which, he said, militant groups within Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat Fatah movement had been about to issue before the Israeli bombing.
Among the dead were 13 civilians, including nine children. Palestinian groups said the raid had upset efforts to coordinate a truce with hardline factions such as Hamas, whose spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin also said truce talks had been underway.
The unsigned document presented by Ramon, a rival to Labour leader Binyamin Ben Eliezer who green-lighted the attack on Gaza on July 22, appealed to all armed groups to halt attacks on Israeli civilians, including in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
It called on armed groups from Fatah and other movements, including Hamas, to end the attacks without renouncing the right to fight the Israeli occupation of Palestinian areas.
“I would be astonished if (Israeli) military intelligence did not know about this document, and I don’t understand why they did not inform the political powers,” Ramon said after the meeting.
He said that such information would have justified cancelling the raid, which Israeli officials said had already been put off eight times to avoid the risk of civilian deaths.
The Israeli fighter-bomber dropped a one-ton laser-guided bomb on the hideaway of Hamas top military leader Salah Shehade, accused of being involved in the killing of more than 200 Israelis.
The raid was unanimously denounced by the international community, although Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said that while he regretted the civilian deaths, it was one of the army’s most successful operations.
It also brought a chorus of enraged cries for retribution from all the main Palestinian groups.
ARAFAT: Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat said on Monday he was still working on a plan for a ceasefire among hardline factions despite an Israeli air raid on Gaza, which he said “had completely destroyed” a tentative accord to reach a truce.
“We reached that agreement but the agreement was completely destroyed by an F-16 attack in Gaza. But we’ll continue our efforts regarding this issue,” he told reporters after meeting US Reverend Jesse Jackson.
Palestinian officials said after the July 22 raid which killed a guerilla leader and 14 other people, 13 of them civilians, that it also derailed talks between Arafat’s Fatah movement and hardline groups like Hamas to secure a unilateral ceasefire.
Arafat stressed on Monday that the “peace process is the only way forward ... to finish the Israeli occupation and have a Palestinian state far from violence, far from state terrorism, bloodshed and far from suicide bombings.”—AFP
