Abbas urges Palestinian militants to follow truce

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) – President Mahmoud Abbas urged Palestinian
factions to halt rocket fire and renew a truce that expires at
year’s end and Israel struck the Gaza Strip on Wednesday to try
to stop the rockets.

But militant leaders who met Abbas in Gaza blamed Israel
for the violence and said there was little chance that they
would continue their commitment to the informal ceasefire into
the new year.

“We are calling on all sides to be committed to calm,” top
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told reporters after the
late night meetings. “We regard calm as in the higher
interest.”

Violence has been growing since Israel completed its
evacuation of troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip in
September after 38 years of occupation. The bloodshed has
soured hopes the pullout could revive peacemaking.

A major surge of fighting could also disrupt, or even
delay, Palestinian parliamentary elections that are due to be
held on January 25.

After meeting Abbas, a leader of Islamic Jihad, which has
carried out suicide bombings despite the truce, said he did not
believe that there would be an extension to the “period of
calm” that militants agreed to follow at a Cairo summit.

“When the time is up there will be a general position, but
calm will most likely not be extended,” said Khaled al-Batsh.

The most recent flare-up has been concentrated around
northern Gaza, from where militants have fired rockets into
Israel in what they call retaliation for raids in the occupied
West Bank as well as strikes on Gaza.

Israeli planes have attacked targets in the Gaza Strip and
the army has threatened to impose a no-go zone within an area
used for firing rockets. Israel has said the buffer would be
enforced with shelling and air strikes, not ground troops.

Aircraft fired missiles into the northern Gaza Strip early
on Wednesday. There were no casualties. The army said it had
targeted three routes used by militants firing rockets.

ELECTIONS COMING

Continued rocket firing could be a blow to Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon as he campaigns to win re-election for a third
term on the back of the largely popular Gaza withdrawal.

A few rockets were launched on Tuesday and one person in a
northern Israeli town was slightly hurt, the army said.

On Tuesday, Israel dropped leaflets over northern Gaza
telling residents “if you continue to stay in the area from
which rockets are fired, you are putting your life in danger.”

Palestinians have condemned the threatened buffer zone as
tantamount to re-occupying parts of Gaza.

Sharon has said that he wants to pursue peacemaking with
the Palestinians, but will only discuss statehood once the
militant factions are disarmed — something the Palestinians
are meant to begin under a U.S.-backed peace “road map.”

Israel has flouted its own road map promise to freeze the
expansion of Jewish settlements and Sharon has vowed to keep
major blocs forever. The Palestinians fear that could deny them
the state they seek in all the West Bank and Gaza.

Abbas’s dominant Fatah movement faces a strong challenge in
the election from Islamic militant group Hamas, which is seen
by many Palestinians as less tainted by corruption.

But Abbas is expected to take a step to end a damaging
split within Fatah on Wednesday by presenting a single list of
candidates for the election, bringing together the rival wings
of veteran leaders and a young guard seeking a share of power.