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Hamas proposes truce with Israel

Offer of ceasefire if Gaza blockade lifted as fuel shortages force UN to suspend food aid.

Gaza food aid
The UN normally delivers food aid to about 860,000 of Gaza's 1.4 million population [AFP]
Published On 24 Apr 2008

Palestinian factions were to meet in Egypt next week to further discuss the Hamas plan.
 
Food aid suspension
 
The proposal came as the UN suspended aid deliveries to more than half a million people in Gaza after its delivery lorries ran out of fuel.

 

The United Nations Works and Relief Agency (UNRWA), which distributes food and essential commodities to nearly two-thirds of Gaza’s population, had earlier warned it expected to run out of fuel by Thursday afternoon.

 

Related

• Main points of the Hamas-proposed truce

The last shipment of fuel to Gaza by Israel – the sole distributor of it to the territory – came before Palestinian fighters attacked an Israeli fuel depot on April 9.

 

An emergency shipment of fuel for UNRWA lorries from within Gaza was reportedly intercepted on Thursday by angry strawberry farmers who needed the supplies for irrigation and refrigeration.

 

“It’s something that we’ve been warning about since early April, and that is what is so tragic,” John Ging, head of UNRWA in the Gaza Strip, told Al Jazeera.

 

“Now we’re at a standstill – we just don’t have the fuel to operate the trucks.

 

“We have the food, and we certainly have hundreds of thousands of desperate people who need it. But this is the situation tonight.”

 

Israel has besieged Gaza since fighters from Hamas’s armed wing routed Palestinian Authority forces loyal to rival Fatah there in June.

 

Key condition

 

The proposal Hamas put forward on Thursday could be extended to a year-long agreement.
 
Al-Zahar said other Palestinian factions, including Islamic Jihad and groups based in Damascus, had preliminarily approved the offer.
 

“The key condition for this ceasefire is that Israel should re-open all the crossings … to lift the embargo on the Palestinian people”

Ghazi Hamad, Hamas spokesman

Ghazi Hamad, a Hamas spokesman, told Al Jazeera that it would aim to begin improving the situation in Gaza first, and then expand to the West Bank as well.

 
He said: “I think the key condition for this ceasefire is that Israel should re-open all the crossings [into Gaza], especially the Rafah crossing, in order to allow people and goods to move in and out and to lift the embargo on the Palestinian people.
 
“Without opening the crossings, there will be no means for the ceasefire.”
 
In exchange, Hamas would agree to stop firing rockets into southern Israel and attacking crossing points.
 
David Chater, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Gaza, said while Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups in the Strip may agree to the deal, it remains to be seen what action Israel will take.
 
He said: “There are many difficulties involved on the Israeli side, [such as] who exactly will control the crossing points, especially at Rafah.
 
“There is a lot of talking still to do on the Israeli side before they accept these conditions.”
 

‘Collective punishment’
 
Speaking a day earlier about the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza, Robert Serry, UN special co-ordinator for the Middle East peace process, said it was “wrong for Israel to punish a civilian population for attacks” carried out by Palestinian fighters.


 
Twenty per cent of ambulances in the Strip are completely out of fuel, according to the UN, while another 60 per cent are due to run out of supplies in less than a week.
 
Fuel reserves at hospitals have, meanwhile, dropped below critical level and the central pharmacy has run out of fuel for refrigeration.
 
Serry said: “I call on Israel to restore fuel supplies to Gaza, and to allow the passage of humanitarian assistance and commercial supplies, sufficient to allow the functioning of all basic services and for Palestinians to live their daily lives.”  

UNRWA delivers aid to about 860,000 of Gaza’s 1.4 million population, with the UN World Food Programme delivering food and essential items to an additional 270,000.

Source: Al Jazeera, News Agencies