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Gaza truce falters, Israel plans Hezbollah swap
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-06-25 09:42 As well as suspending hostilities between Israel and Hamas, the ceasefire, which began last Thursday, required that Israel ease its economic embargo on the impoverished coastal strip. Israel wants the opening of Gaza's key border with Egypt to be conditioned on a deal for Shalit's release, and Olmert aides said he received assurances on the issue during talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak at a Red Sea resort on Tuesday. Mubarak said Cairo was "exerting efforts for Shalit" but that he did not want the soldier linked to the Gaza truce. Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal said last week Shalit's release depended on Israel freeing jailed Palestinians, though the Olmert government has balked at many of the names on the list. The raid on the West Bank city of Nablus, which killed a Hamas member as well as an Islamic Jihad leader, was the first fatal Israeli action since the truce took hold in Gaza. Similar West Bank operations and Palestinian rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip led to the breakdown of previous truce deals. Earlier on Tuesday, the Israeli army said Palestinians fired a mortar shell into Israel from Gaza overnight in the first reported violation by militants of the ceasefire. No one was hurt in that incident and there was no claim of responsibility. In Berlin, Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa called for the West to drop its opposition to Abbas reconciling with Hamas a year after the Islamists routed the Palestinian president's forces to take over Gaza. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice rebuffed him. "You cannot have peace if there is not a partner who respects the right of the other partner to exist," she said, in an apparent reference to Hamas, which Washington refuses to deal with because it does not recognize Israel or past peace accords. |
