US President Barack Obama’s new Mideast envoy promised on Wednesday a vigorous push for Israel-Palestinian peace, saying Gaza militants must end their weapons smuggling and the territory’s blockaded borders must be pried open if a cease-fire already marred by violence is to take hold.
George Mitchell held his first round of talks with regional leaders to determine the next steps the Obama administration would take toward reviving peace negotiations following Israel’s blistering military offensive against Gaza’s Islamic Hamas rulers.
But a flare-up of Gaza violence underscored the more immediate priority — shoring up the 10-day-old cease-fire.
Palestinians fired rockets into Israel early yesterday and late on Wednesday and the military said Israeli warplanes struck Gaza smuggling tunnels and a weapons factory.
After talks in Jerusalem on Wednesday with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Mitchell said consolidating the cease-fire was “of critical importance.”
He said a longer-term truce should be based on “an end to smuggling and reopening of the crossings” into Gaza. Israel and Egypt have kept their borders with Gaza largely closed since Hamas seized control of the territory by force in 2007.
Mitchell was silent on details of his meetings.
He was expected to hold talks with pro-Western Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank yesterday. Mitchell has no plans to meet with Hamas.
It would be hard for the cease-fire to hold unless arrangements are made to stop the flow of arms to Hamas and end the blockade of the territory.
Mitchell said the crossings should be opened on the basis of a 2005 agreement brokered by the US that put the main crossing — the passage between Egypt and Gaza — under the management of Abbas’ Palestinian Authority, with European monitors deployed to prevent smuggling.
However, Hamas, which routed Abbas loyalists when it took over Gaza, has said it, too, wants a role at the crossings in recognition of its power in the territory. Israel and Abbas do not want Hamas there.
Olmert told Mitchell that Hamas’ power in Gaza “must diminish” and Abbas must “gain a foothold” there, an Olmert aide said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the meeting was closed.
Olmert said crossings between Israel and Gaza “will only open permanently” after the freeing of Gilad Schalit, an Israeli soldier Gaza militants captured in June 2006, the aide said.
In Qatar on Wednesday, Hamas’ supreme leader, Khaled Mashaal, said the group would not link the opening of crossings to the release of the Israeli soldier.
Hamas wants Israel to free hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Schalit.
Egypt has been exploring the possibility of including some Hamas figures in a Palestinian Authority presence at the border, but that would require some form of reconciliation between the factions, which remain bitter rivals. Egypt hopes to hold reconciliation talks between Hamas and Abbas by the middle of next month.
One proposal is for a new unity Palestinian governent including Hamas that could move forward with peace talks with Israel. A 2007 try at a unity government dissolved in Palestinian infighting.
What’s more, Israel, the US and Europe demand Hamas drop its calls for Israel’s destruction and renounce anti-Israeli attacks, something Hamas has refused to do despite years of bruising international sanctions and the recent war.
“What we have to achieve is a ceasefire that produces calm for a period of time that is long and is respected by everyone,” EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said.
“It’s for Hamas to change. Offers have been made to Hamas to change and adapt,” Solana, who is spearheading EU diplomatic efforts, said in Amman, Jordan.
The latest burst of violence was the worst since Israel and Hamas separately declared cease-fires on Jan. 18.
It started on Tuesday when a remote-controlled roadside bomb on the Gaza side killed an Israeli soldier on the border and wounded three others.
Israel swiftly sent tanks and bulldozers into northern Gaza to plow up the attack site and launched an airstrike that wounded a Hamas militant. Pre-dawn airstrikes on Wednesday pounded tunnels used to smuggle arms, money and people into Gaza from Egypt.
Late on Wednesday, a rocket fired from Gaza struck an open area in southern Israel, causing no injuries or damage but drawing an airstrike after midnight on a weapons-making facility in southern Gaza, the military said. It was the first rocket attack since Hamas ceased fire, in addition to a mortar volley last Tuesday, the military said.
Another rocket, fired from the vicinity of the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza early yesterday, also fell on open ground, the military said.
“Israel wants the quiet in the south to continue but yesterday’s attack is a deliberate provocation designed to undermine and torpedo the calm,” government spokesman Mark Regev said. “If Hamas acts to undermine the cease-fire, it will have no one but itself to blame for the consequences.”
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