U.S. Envoy Urges Cease-Fire After Gaza Violence
George J. Mitchell, President Obama's special Middle East envoy, met with President Shimon Peres of Israel on Wednesday in Jerusalem.
JERUSALEM — President Obama’s special Middle East envoy arrived in Jerusalem on Wednesday after urging a “consolidated” cease-fire following renewed Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip overnight.
Hours before George J. Mitchell arrived from Egypt, the Israeli military said its warplanes bombed smuggling tunnels on Egypt’s border with Gaza in reprisal for the death of an Israeli soldier in a roadside bomb attack on Tuesday on Israeli soil close to the Gaza-Israel border.
After 10 days of relative calm following the cease-fires that halted the Gaza war, violence flared on Tuesday after the Israeli soldier died and Israeli troops mounted incursions into Gaza that killed one Palestinian and wounded another. The violence represented the first serious confrontations between Hamas and Israel since they declared separate cease-fires on Jan. 18.
The violence underlined the urgency of Mr. Mitchell’s mission. He met on Wednesday with President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and also scheduled discussions with the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Speaking in Cairo following talks with President Hosni Mubarak, Mr. Mitchell said it was “of critical importance that the cease-fire be extended and consolidated.”
A long-term Gaza truce, he later added following discussions in Jerusalem, must be based on an end to weapons smuggling to Hamas and the re-opening of the territory’s blockaded borders, the Associated Press reported.
Mr. Mitchell said in Cairo that he will report his findings “in just a few days” to Mr. Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton after talks in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, France and Britain following his discussions in Egypt and Israel.
He also indicated that he planned to return “to the region in the very near future to continue this effort,” suggesting that his first discussions were preliminary.
In an interview broadcast Tuesday on Dubai-based Al Arabiya satellite television, Mr. Obama said that he had instructed Mr. Mitchell to “start by listening, because all too often the United States starts by dictating.”
On Wednesday, a military spokesman in Tel Aviv, who spoke in return for customary anonymity, said three tunnels along the Egypt-Gaza border had been bombed overnight as part of Israel’s effort to prevent Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza, from assembling and firing missiles into Israel.
Hamas seemed eager to play down what had happened on Tuesday, saying it was not clear who was responsible for the explosive device, which had been planted inside Israel, apparently under cover of fog in the early morning, and set off by remote control when an Israeli military vehicle was nearby. But Israeli officials interpreted the attack, which wounded three other soldiers, as an ominous sign that Hamas was testing them.
Later, a Hamas militant on a motorcycle in the town of Khan Yunis, in southern Gaza, was hit by a missile from an Israeli drone but was not killed, witnesses said. Palestinian witnesses said that Israeli military vehicles had entered Khan Yunis, but that they had left within hours.
The Palestinian who was killed Tuesday was identified by family members as Anwar Zaid Sammor, a farmer. He was killed during a limited Israeli incursion into the town of Deir al-Balah, near the site of the explosion directed at the Israeli military. The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the Palestinian’s death, which witnesses said occurred during heavy gunfire.
Israel also closed the crossings into Gaza on Tuesday where some 185 trucks with humanitarian goods were to enter, to help Palestinians here resume their lives after the war, which Israeli leaders said was aimed at stopping rocket fire into Israel and at weakening Hamas.
In an announcement that seemed aimed at speeding up reconstruction, the Hamas government said it would not insist on collecting reconstruction money expected to be donated from around the world. Israel, along with many Western and some Arab countries, is trying to isolate Hamas and wants the Palestinian Authority of the West Bank and international aid groups to control the aid, so that Hamas does not get credit for the rebuilding.
“The government here will make it easy for whoever wants to reconstruct Gaza,” Ismail Haniya, the Hamas prime minister, said in a written statement distributed to reporters. “We do not insist on collecting the reconstruction money ourselves. Our intention is to supervise and to make sure that the money will end the misery of the homeless.”
Mr. Haniya remains in hiding, but Ahmed Yousef, a political adviser to the prime minister, said in an interview that Hamas had decided to let all donated money flow through different avenues based on the various alliances.
“Iran and Qatar will give money into Hamas pockets,” he said, while others, like the Saudis and the West, will funnel it through the Palestinian Authority and the United Nations. But he did say that the Hamas government here expected to administer the aid, since that was its responsibility. Others are likely to object to that.
Mr. Yousef added that Israel’s willingness to open the border only for humanitarian aid was unacceptable, since Gaza needed many more things to rebuild its economy and produce relief for those who suffered in the war, which medical officials here say killed more than 1,300 Palestinians. The cease-fire is contingent on a full border opening, Mr. Yousef said.
In Cairo, Hamas and representatives of its rival, the Fatah Party, a more moderate and pro-Western group that dominates the Palestinian Authority, met in an effort to come up with a mechanism that would allow them both to play a role in the rebuilding. About 4,000 homes have been destroyed and 20,000 damaged, along with mosques, factories, schools, roads and water and sewage systems.
Mr. Yousef said he was pleased about the election of President Obama and respected Mr. Mitchell but was disappointed that the envoy had chosen not to hold discussions with Hamas.
“You have to engage with Hamas,” he said. “The new administration says it wants to engage with Iran. I am hoping to hear the same thing about Hamas.”
The United States and its allies in the so-called quartet — the European Union, Russia and the United Nations — have demanded of Hamas that it agree to three conditions: respect agreements reached between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, renounce violence and recognize Israel.
Mr. Yousef said the first two could well be fulfilled through an extended cease-fire that Hamas hoped to negotiate with Israel via Egypt. He said Hamas was not prepared to recognize Israel but hoped that with two of the three demands met, attitudes toward Hamas might shift.
Isabel Kershner reported from Jerusalem, and Ethan Bronner from Gaza. Taghreed El-Khodary contributed reporting from Gaza, Myra Noveck from Jerusalem, and Alan Cowell from Paris.
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