“So far the contacts seem positive”. He said Hamas did not want these talks to be an extension of the Oslo process, or an attempt to revive an agreement that had already failed. We can not say today that we have something in our hand.
Advertisement
“The question is how to resolve the Gaza problem?”
The Hamas official noted that “the organization is open to all efforts [to bring about a cease-fire], but this won’t be done on account of the Palestinian national interest”.
A truce in Gaza could be used as a template for an Israeli unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank.
“The ceasefire with the Israeli occupation remains in place and if Israel wants to keep it in place it must pay its price, which is a full lifting of the blockade on Gaza”, Zahar said in remarks to Safa news agency.
The two territories, which comprise the future Palestinian state in the view of the global community, are separated by Israel, although the self-rule agreements specify that they are to be treated as one territorial unit.
“There are mediators who are doing their utmost to reach this agreement”, he said.
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair had reportedly met with Meshaal in recent months about a possible longer term ceasefire.
“Fatah spokesman Ahmed Assaf put the PA’s concerns bluntly: “[An Israel-Hamas deal] would achieve Israel’s strategic goal of killing the idea of establishing an independent Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital.
What has added urgency to Hamas’s change of direction is the Palestinian public’s mounting pressure, demanding an end to the conflict with Israel which robbed three generations of their basic right to live with dignity and left them with no prospect for a better future.
A bus with about fifty Palestinians on it was travelling from Rafah on the Egypt-Gaza border to Cairo airport when it was ambushed, the security sources said.
Advertisement
Allow Israel to reduce the operational cost of maintaining military vigilance on the Gaza border, which heavily taxes its fighting forces, and do so without giving up any territory and potentially saving lives.
