International pressure for a negotiated cease-fire intensified a day after Israeli shells killed some 40 people at a United Nations school in Gaza. Israel said Hamas militants had fired mortar shells near the school prior to Israel's shelling.
Israel suspended its military operations in Gaza for three hours on Wednesday to allow humanitarian aid and fuel for power generation to reach Gazans, who used the afternoon break to try to shop.
But fighting resumed soon afterward. In the evening, the Israeli Army dropped leaflets warning the citizens of Rafah, next to the border with Egypt, to leave their homes. Israel has been bombing the tunnel networks through which arms and consumer goods are smuggled from Egypt into Gaza.
Hamas fired 22 rockets into Israel, but no one was wounded.
"There is an agreement on general principles, that Hamas should stop rocket fire and mustn't rearm," a senior Israeli official said Wednesday evening. "But that's like agreeing that motherhood is a good thing. We have to transform those agreed principles into working procedures on the ground, and that's barely begun."
The government spokesman, Mark Regev, said that "the challenge now is to get the details to match the principles."
There were early signs that a formal diplomatic negotiation could begin after 12 days of fighting. Egypt's chief of intelligence, Omar Suleiman, is expected to serve as a go-between for Israel and Hamas. Two Israeli officials — a senior aide to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Shalom Turgeman, and a senior military official, Amos Gilad — are expected to go to Egypt on Thursday to begin discussions, Israeli officials said.
The United States has been involved in the negotiations behind the scenes, senior Israeli and French officials said, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice "constantly on the phone" with Olmert, according to one Israeli official.
In Washington, the White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, said of talks about a cease-fire: "As I understand, the Israelis are open to the concept but they want to learn more about the details; so do we."
At the United Nations, several Arab states pressed for a binding Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire. But the United States and other Western powers called for a nonbinding resolution on halting the violence.
A senior French official in Paris said that Sarkozy's earlier comment about an agreement on a cease-fire was misunderstood, saying: "The plan is not a cease-fire, the plan is a roadmap toward a cease-fire." One crucial aspect of any agreement is how to prevent new smuggling tunnels from being built under Egypt's border with Gaza.
The senior Israeli official raised the possibility of reaching "tacit agreements" with Hamas to end rocket fire, while also persuading Egypt to allow American and perhaps European army engineers to help seal its border with Gaza above and below ground.
Hamas is insisting that any new arrangement include the reopening of the border crossings for fuel and goods with Israel and the reopening of the Rafah crossing into Egypt for people. President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt has said that a 2005 agreement on the Rafah crossing, reached with Israel and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, must be respected. That agreement called for a Palestinian Authority presence at the crossing, supervision by European Union monitors and Israeli video surveillance of who enters and leaves.
Hamas wants to control the crossing itself and is not eager to cooperate with Fatah, its arch-rival.
In Washington, President-elect Barack Obama, said Wednesday that he would "engage immediately" in the Middle East crisis and that he was "deeply concerned" about the loss of life on both sides.
"I am doing everything that we have to do to make sure that the day I take office we are prepared to engage immediately in trying to deal with the situation there," he said at a press conference. "Not only the short-term situation but building a process whereby we can achieve a more lasting peace in the region."
Source: International Herald Tribune
