GAZA: Palestinian political and militant factions agree on draft proposal for truce with Israel

Palestinian militant groups offered to stop firing rockets into the Jewish state in exchange for an Israeli cessation of all attacks on the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank, a spokesman said on Thursday (November 23). The main Palestinian factions including the governing Hamas group, the rival Fatah of President Mahmoud Abbas and other smaller political and militant groups reached the understanding while meeting Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza. "There is a very good basis and a common ground for a Palestinian consensus on calming the situation on the basis of mutuality and to cease the military activities at least in the case of the Gaza Strip," Palestinian lawmaker Mustafa Barghouti told a news conference following the meeting. The factions said a deal would only take effect after Israel agrees and actually ends military actions. The offer was limited only to rocket firing and did not include other forms of attacks by militants such as cross-border attacks and suicide bombings. Haniyeh was scheduled to meet President Abbas later on Thursday. Haniyeh would present the proposal to Abbas in the hope that the President would then put the proposal to Israel. "If the Israelis agree then the deal will be ratified by all parties. The implementation of the agreement will be pending on whether we will see an end to the aggression on ground," leader of the Islamic JIhad militant group, Khader Habib, told Reuters. On Wednesday (November 22), the Israeli government decided to press on with a five-month-old offensive which it launched after militants abducted a soldier in a cross-border raid from the Gaza Strip last June. It did not order a massive assault aimed at curbing an upsurge in Palestinian militant rocket strikes on the Jewish state. Israel has killed nearly 400 Palestinians in Gaza, about half of them civilians, since it began the offensive, hospital officials and residents say. Three soldiers have been killed.

ITN Source | November 24, 2006

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