Israel Continues Gaza Withdrawal as Cease-Fire Holds

January 20, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/world/middleeast/20mideast.html
By ISABEL KERSHNER
JERUSALEM — Israeli troops and tanks continued to leave Gaza on Monday as a fragile cease-fire opened the way for intensified international efforts to build a more durable peace.

Small skirmishes broke out on Sunday but Gaza was largely quiet after Israel, then Hamas, announced unilateral cease-fires, ending a devastating 22-day battle in which more than 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis died. Some news reports said Israeli forces planned to complete their withdrawal in time for the inauguration on Tuesday of Barack Obama as president of the United States.

But an Israeli military spokesman, speaking in return for customary anonymity, said there was “no official basis for that report but there’s a gradual thinning of troops going on.” He declined to discuss the timetable for the withdrawal to be completed. In Gaza, residents said police officers had returned to their posts and there had been no apparent renewal of hostilities.

European and Arab leaders met in Egypt, where they pledged support for rebuilding Gaza, and called for an end to arms smuggling, as Israel has demanded, and the opening of Gaza’s borders, as demanded by Hamas, the Islamic militant movement that rules Gaza.

Six European leaders went on to Jerusalem, where Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told them that Israel was interested in leaving Gaza “as quickly as possible,” as soon as the circumstances allowed. A military official confirmed on Sunday evening that a “gradual withdrawal” was under way.

When it embarked on the campaign, Israel said its main military objective was to significantly reduce the Hamas rocket fire out of Gaza and to fundamentally change the security situation in Israel’s south. The results so far seem inconclusive.

Palestinian militants in Gaza fired at least 19 rockets at southern Israel on Sunday, including some after Hamas and other militant groups had declared the cease-fire. Most landed without causing injury, but one struck a house in the Israeli port city of Ashdod, lightly wounding one woman, the military said.

Israel said it carried out three air strikes in Gaza on Sunday, one against a group of gunmen who opened fire on its forces and two against rocket-launching squads. There were conflicting reports of casualties, with either one man or one girl said to have been killed.

B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, cited a Gaza resident who had said that his brother, a farmer, was killed by Israeli fire.

In a speech broadcast Sunday night on Hamas’s Al Aqsa television, the Hamas leader Ismail Haniya, who has been in hiding for the past three weeks, claimed victory against Israel. He pledged to provide compensation to families who suffered damage during the war.

On Monday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, called Khaled Meshal, Hamas’s senior exiled leader, in Damascus to tell him that: "Today is the beginning of victory and perseverance will complete the links of victory,” the Iranian IRNA news agency reported.

Gaza health officials increased the Palestinian death toll on Sunday to about 1,300 people, including 104 women and 410 children. The number is expected to rise as more bodies are found.

Israel’s cease-fire took effect early Sunday. About 12 hours later, Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza announced their immediate, weeklong cease-fire.

Hamas and its associates gave Israeli troops a week to leave the coastal enclave. Hamas had previously said it would continue fighting as long as Israeli forces remained.

Referring to the one-week deadline, Mark Regev, a spokesman for Mr. Olmert, said Israel did not “take dictates from Hamas.” But he also insisted that Israel, which began an air offensive against Hamas on Dec. 27 and sent ground forces in a week later, had no desire to stay in Gaza for long. “If it is quiet, it will be easier for us to leave expeditiously,” he said.

Israeli military and political leaders have emphasized that Israel will respond to any attacks, but on Sunday the guns largely gave way to diplomacy.

Hamas demands the opening of the Gaza border crossings as a condition for a lasting truce. Israel’s primary condition is an internationally guaranteed mechanism to prevent weapons smuggling across Egypt’s border into Gaza.

At a summit meeting at the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheik on Sunday, European and moderate Arab leaders offered their support for both goals. “We are ready to offer technical, diplomatic, military and marine assistance to Israel and Egypt to stop the smuggling of weapons,” President Nicolas Sarkozy of France said at a news conference after the meeting.

Egypt also hopes to force Hamas into reconciliation talks with its rival, Fatah, as a means of unifying the Palestinian leadership and eventually returning Gaza to more moderate Palestinian Authority rule. Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007, routing the Fatah forces loyal to the authority.

Hamas, which is classified by Israel, the United States and the European Union as a terrorist organization, has been severely battered by the Israeli military operation in Gaza but remains in control.

From Sharm el Sheik, the French, British, German, Spanish, Italian and Czech leaders traveled to Jerusalem for dinner with Mr. Olmert, who told his guests that undermining Hamas rule in Gaza depended on strengthening the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, whose power is currently confined to the West Bank.

On Sunday, France also sent four planes carrying medical supplies, water treatment equipment and 80 aid workers including surgeons, doctors and bomb disposal experts to Egypt, the French Foreign Ministry said. The equipment and personnel were on standby on the Egyptian side of the Gaza border, ready to enter as soon as they could.

Meanwhile, competition for control of the reconstruction of Gaza seems to have begun.

Salam Fayyad, the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, complained that European leaders and the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, had proposed setting up an interim international committee to finance and organize the reconstruction. Such a committee would cut out Hamas, but it would also bypass the authority.

Robert F. Worth contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon,, and Ethan Bronner from Gaza City.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company