Hamas still committed to truce

Hamas, the largest Palestinian militant group said today it would not go back to all-out war against Israel, even after Israeli missiles killed one of its top gunmen.

But with an informal, nine-month-old truce approaching its December 31 expiry, spokesman Mushir Al-Masri said its renewal wasn’t assured if Israeli attacks would persist. “In the face of this Zionist aggression, no one should dream about the renewal of this truce,” he said.

Israel, meanwhile, ratcheted up its demands for a crackdown on militants, saying Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas must arrest gunmen, not only disarm them.

In the West Bank, an Israeli soldier was killed during a round-up of militants near Jenin, the army spokesman said. In the same operation, an Islamic Jihad militant involved in a suicide bombing in Israel last week was arrested, the army said.

More than a week of violence, including Israeli assassinations of militants and the suicide bombing, has hurt hopes for a return to peacemaking following Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in September.

In an airstrike yesterday, missiles struck a car carrying Hassan Madhoun, a leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a violent offshoot of Abbas’ Fatah party, who was involved in a bombing at the Israeli port of Ashdod.

Israel had been pressuring Abbas to arrest Madhoun since the beginning of the year, providing the gunman’s address and cellular phone number. At Sharon’s urging, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also brought up Madhoun with Abbas, Israeli officials have said.

The other man killed in the airstrike was rocket expert Fawzi Abu Kara of Hamas, who the military said was not a target.

At funerals today for the two militants, gunmen fired in the air and carried rocket launchers. Calls for revenge blared from loudspeakers, and chants of “Death to Israel, yes to resistance,” rose from the crowds.

Hamas vowed revenge for Abu Kara’s killing, but said it would not turn its back now on an informal truce militant factions agreed to in February.

“Our people have the right to respond to the Israeli crimes committed against our civilians and our holy warriors,” spokesman sami Abu Zuhri said. “Our commitment to the calm does not mean that we don’t have the right to retaliate.”

Militant factions interpret the ceasefire to mean they can respond to individual Israeli attacks while remaining committed to the truce, a position Abbas has dismissed as unacceptable. Since the truce, Hamas and Al Aqsa have refrained from carrying out attacks in Israel, while Islamic Jihad has been responsible for four suicide bombings.

Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said today that operations against militants would stop once Abbas, widely known as Abu Mazen, decides to disarm them.

“We said very clearly that if we leave Gaza, any (militant) operation would draw a very tough Israeli reaction,” Shalom said. “If Abu Mazen would make the strategic decision that he has refused to make, to dismantle terror organisations and prevent them from carrying out activity from the Gaza Strip, believe me, on that same day all the operations in Gaza will stop.”

Abbas is locked in a struggle with the militants for control of Gaza and has tried, unsuccessfully so far, to stop attacks against Israel. He has shied from forcibly disarming them, fearing that would provoke civil war.

Israel, meanwhile, raised the bar on the crackdown its demanded.

A Palestinian legislator, Ziad Abu Zayyad, told Israel’s Army Radio today that Israel had rejected a Palestinian Authority proposal that Israel stop targeting militants if they would lay down their guns.

A senior Israeli government official said Israel tried that in the past, but militants simply lay low for a while, then resumed their activity later.“We don’t want them to lay down arms, we want them to be arrested,” he said.

Raanan Gissin, an aide to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said: “We’re not going to pay with Israeli lives while they are experimenting in trying to reach understandings with terror organisations and they continue to carry out terror attacks against us.”

Palestinians fired two rockets and a mortar from Gaza at southern Israel late yesterday and early today, but no injuries were reported. The southern Israeli city of Sderot – a frequent target for Palestinian rocket and mortar attacks - was placed on high alert after the assassinations.