Cairo Talks to Address Gaza Dispute as Cease-Fire
Holds
By Saud Abu Ramadan, Jonathan Ferziger and Terry Atlas - Aug 5, 2014
Negotiators are seeking a lasting solution to the Gaza conflict at talks in Cairo, as Israel
withdrew troops on the first day of a 72-hour cease-fire that has held so far.
Under the Egyptian-brokered accord, the latest effort to end four weeks of fighting,
hostilities ceased at 8 a.m. local time yesterday. Israel said it pulled the last of its troops
back to just outside the Gaza Strip.
Palestinian, Egyptian and U.S. diplomats were already in Cairo discussing a longer-term
accord, and Israel’s Haaretz newspaper and Egypt’s official Middle East News Agency
said an Israeli delegation arrived there late yesterday. Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu’s office declined to comment. Israel had said it would join the talks if the
truce holds, after an earlier one collapsed within hours.
The Gaza offensive, which Israel said was intended to end rocket attacks on the Jewish
state and destroy the tunnels militants used to stage raids, has been the deadliest in the
territory since Israeli settlers and soldiers left in 2005. At least 1,868 Palestinians have
been killed, the majority of them civilians, according to Gaza Health Ministry spokesman
Ashraf al-Qedra. Sixty-seven people have been killed on the Israeli side, 64 of them
soldiers.
‘Grave Mistake’
Israel’s army has said it achieved its goals. “The troops are now deployed on the Gaza
border and ready for any future mission,” Major General Sami Turgeman said, warning
that a truce violation by Hamas, the Islamist group that rules Gaza, would be “a grave
mistake.”
Israel and Hamas want a cease-fire that addresses issues earlier accords didn’t resolve.
Hamas is pressing to lift the blockade of Gaza by Israel and Egypt, while Israel wants to
eliminate the threat of future attacks from the territory.
“The Israeli demand is that the Palestinian militias and terrorist organizations -- not just
Hamas but also Palestine’s Islamic Jihad and various other groups -- disarm,” Martin
Indyk, vice president of the Brookings Institution, said at a panel discussion in
Washington yesterday.
An accord may hinge on expanding the influence of the Palestinian Authority, headed by
President Mahmoud Abbas, in Gaza at the expense of Hamas, said Indyk, a former U.S.
peace negotiator. That could start with control over border crossings and eventually
ensure that “the guns can only be in the hands of the Palestinian Authority,” he said,
though he added that he was skeptical whether such an accord could be reached.
Rockets Reduced
Abbas’s Fatah faction runs the West Bank and split with Hamas seven years ago, though
the groups have sought to reconcile since the breakdown of U.S.-brokered peace talks in
April. Azzam al-Ahmad from Fatah is the head of the Palestinian delegation in Cairo,
which also includes Hamas officials. Israel, like the U.S. and European Union, considers
Hamas a terrorist organization.
The acting U.S. special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, Frank Lowenstein, is
heading to Cairo to support the Egyptian initiative, Jen Psaki, a State Department
spokeswoman, said in a posting on Twitter.
The Israeli army says it already has reduced the capacity of militants in Gaza to attack. It
estimates that Palestinians have only one-third of the 10,000 rockets they had before the
offensive. Hamas and other militant groups fired 3,356 into Israel since July 8, while
Israeli forces destroyed another one-third of the supply, the army said in an e-mail. Army
spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner said 32 tunnels were destroyed.
‘Restoring Deterrence’
The conflict hasn’t delivered major gains for either side, though that won’t stop both
from claiming victory, said Yiftah Shapir, senior research fellow at the Institute for
National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.
“Hamas has already claimed success because for them it was about withstanding the
might of the Israeli military for 28 days,” Shapir said in a phone interview. “Tactically
Israel achieved its goals but strategically, which was about restoring our deterrence, it
remains to be seen.”
People displaced by the fighting began to return yesterday to their homes, many of which
have been destroyed. The Israeli assaults left at least 10,000 Gaza homes uninhabitable,
according to estimates last week by Palestinian rights group Al-Mizan. Schools, medical
centers, mosques, parks, a power station and water and sewage facilities also have been
hit.
In southern Gaza, residents sorted through rubble for furniture and other belongings.
Fishermen headed out to sea off Gaza City, while cars returned to streets that had been
largely deserted since the conflict began.
Israel’s army, air force and navy hit more than 4,800 targets in the seaside strip, while
Hamas and other Gaza militant groups fired in excess of 3,300 rockets at Israeli towns
and cities and staged armed raids through tunnels and by sea.
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