Gaza City, Gaza Strip – Rocket fire from Gaza died down Sunday after a daybreak cease-fire, raising hopes for an end to five months of bloody destruction and a new opening toward peace talks.
The surprise truce was supposed to take effect at 6 a.m., but in the four hours that followed, 11 rockets were fired from Gaza at Israeli towns and villages and some Palestinian militants threatened to keep up the attacks.
Israel did not retaliate, saying it wanted to give the truce a chance.
“Even though there are still violations of the cease-fire by the Palestinian side, I have instructed our defense officials not to respond, to show restraint and to give this cease-fire a chance to take full effect,” Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said during a ceremony at a high school in southern Israel.
Rivals Hamas and Fatah, the two main factions in the Palestinian government, also publicly backed the truce, and by nightfall, it appeared to take hold. Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of the ruling Hamas movement said he had contacted the leaders of all Palestinian factions Sunday and they reassured him they were committed to the cease-fire.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, who has been pressing for a reopening of peace talks with Israel, ordered his security forces to patrol the Gaza border Sunday to stop rocket attacks. Security officers fanned out across northern Gaza, taking up positions at major intersections with orders to stop anyone suspicious, and the salvos stopped by the afternoon.
“The instructions are clear. Anyone violating the national agreement will be considered to be breaking the law,” said Lt. Gen. Abdel Razek Mejaidie, Abbas’ security adviser.
Battle-hardened Israelis and Palestinians were wary, having seen similar truces and peace efforts disintegrate and slip back into violence.
In the Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, the source of most of the rocket fire and target of punishing Israeli reprisals, Rafik Gaish was bitter because the Israelis tore up his fields.
“My potatoes were apparently launching rockets,” the farmer scoffed. “We are for this agreement, we want peace – but what will stop the Jews?”
Word of the cease-fire came shortly after Hamas’ Damascus-based supreme leader, Khaled Mashaal, held several days of talks in Cairo with Egyptian mediators. Palestinian officials said those talks played a role in speeding up the agreement.
In a television interview aired Sunday, Mashaal said Hamas would be willing to give negotiations eight months or a year before launching a new uprising against Israel, backing away from a six-month deadline he set the day before.
