Gaza ceasefire hopes rise following an upsurge in violence
Speaking shortly after a rocket fired from Gaza struck near the southern city of Ashkelon, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that any further attacks would be dealt with harshly.
“If the criminal attacks against the Israeli military and civilians continue, Israel will respond with even more force,” he told reporters at the beginning of the weekly cabinet meeting.
But both Israeli and Palestinian officials expressed support for a potential ceasefire, after days of rocket fire and retaliatory Israeli air raids that killed at least 18 people in Gaza.
The flare-up came after an anti-tank missile fired from Gaza hit an Israeli school bus on Thursday, wounding two people, one of them critically.
Defence Minister Ehud Barak said that Israel was ready to end the confrontation, if Hamas and other armed groups stopped firing.
“If they cease firing, we’ll cease firing,” he said, reacting to reports that the political wing of the Islamist group Hamas, which controls Gaza, was ready for a truce.
“We will act along the lines of what happens on the ground,” added Barak, who indefinitely postponed a trip to Washington as violence escalated around the territory where Israel fought a devastating 22-day conflict in December 2008-January 2009.
It was the first time that an Israeli minister had floated the possibility of a ceasefire since deadly clashes with the Palestinians broke out.
Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza had previously announced a unilateral truce that unravelled before it had a chance to take hold, with militants firing dozens of rockets and mortar rounds into southern Israel.
But on Saturday, a senior Israeli security official said Hamas’s political wing had asked Israel for a ceasefire.
“The political branch of Hamas has sent a message asking for an Israeli ceasefire” in exchange for a halt to Palestinian attacks, the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said yesterday that the group would be willing to stop firing if Israel announced a ceasefire.
“The ball is in the court of the occupation,” Abu Zuhri told AFP. “Our message to the occupation is that a truce will be met with a truce.”
Rockets and mortar rounds fired from Gaza continued to hit Israeli territory on Sunday, with a rocket believed to be an industrially manufactured Grad exploding in an uninhabited area near the southern town of Ashkelon, a police spokesman said.
