Israeli, Palestinian hawks reject new truce efforts

Palestinian policemen close a tunnel in the Rafah refugee camp, close to the Egyptian border on Saturday. The Palestinian Authority sealed three arms smuggling tunnels running between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, and arrested some smugglers. Photo: AFP

Tensions were high with the radical group Hamas threatening new suicide bombings and Israeli tanks poised north of the Gaza Strip after militants hit Israel with what officers called a new, longer-range rocket.

Progress on a US-sponsored peace plan was stalled after the latest round of bloodshed, capped last week by a deadly suicide bombing in central Jerusalem and a retaliatory Israeli airstrike on a Hamas leader.

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Palestinian officials said Saturday a new truce was possible if the Israelis formally recognised it, pulled out of occupied towns and ended their practice of "targeted killings" of militant leaders.

But Israel, which considered the truce dead after the bombing Tuesday that killed 21 passengers on a Jerusalem bus, dismissed on Sunday the suggestion of a new ceasefire.

"It is not serious," senior government spokesman Avi Pazner told AFP. "As long as terrorist organisations continue to exist, there will not be the possibility of a real ceasefire."

Pazner repeated Israeli demands that the Palestinian Authority take all measures to disarm and dismantle the hardline groups, and arrest and prosecute their leaders for involvement in violence.

"Only after that can the peace process continue," he said.

Hamas leader Abdelaziz al-Rantissi also rejected out of hand the possibility of negotiating a new truce to replace the one formally scrapped after the death Thursday of one of his top aides, Ismail Abu Shanab.

"There is no possibility to talk about this issue now," Rantissi told AFP. "The Zionist enemy should pay a high price for their crime."

Asked about Pazner's categorical rejection of a new truce, Rantissi said, "When we will contact them (the Israelis) through suicide operations, they will speak differently."

Despite a relative calm that settled on the region over the weekend, Israeli forces remained on high alert, especially after Palestinian militants fired a makeshift rocket deep into Israel from the Gaza Strip.

Israeli military sources said it was the first time a rocket had reached the outskirts of the Israeli port city of Ashkelon, some 10 kilometres (six miles) from the border with the Gaza Strip.

Israeli military intelligence said recently that Hamas had improved the capabilities of its rockets, and Israeli media said the army was ready to move on Gaza if the rocketfire continued.

A photograph of Israeli tanks massed outside the Gaza Strip was splashed across the front page of the Hebrew daily Maariv on Sunday, emblazoned with the caption: "Tank barrels pointed at Gaza".

"Israel is giving the Palestinian Authority a chance (to crack down on militants) and that is why the army is not moving into the Gaza Strip," a senior Israeli military official said Sunday.

"But Israel must be ready for tougher developments," the unidentified commander told public radio.

For its part, the Palestinian Authority said late Saturday it had sealed three arms-smuggling tunnels running into the Gaza Strip from Egypt and arrested nine weapons smugglers in the first operation of its kind.

But rifts appeared to be widening within the Palestinian leadership over control of its security services, with prime minister Mahmud Abbas rejecting a bid to strip him of his post as interior minister.

Officials of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement said its central committee had considered a proposal to seek the nomination of Nasser Yusuf, a general with ties to Arafat in the past, to the interior post.