JERUSALEM — A senior official says Hamas has decided to allow a 72-hour cease-fire with Israel to expire because Israel has rejected all of the group’s demands in indirect talks in Cairo.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was en route to informing Egyptian mediators of the decision.
The official says the Hamas delegation met for several hours early Friday with Egyptian officials. He says that in exchange for extending the truce, Hamas had demanded that Israel agree in principle to end Gaza’s border closure and allow the rebuilding of Gaza.
He says Hamas was told by Egypt that Israel rejected those demands.
Meanwhile, two rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip early Friday landing in empty fields in southern Israel, the Israeli army said.
The rockets caused no casualties, it added. There has been no immediate Israeli response. No one claimed responsibility for the rockets
.
But a text message from Hamas’ military wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, warned Thursday there would be no extension of the cease-fire if there was no agreement to permanently lift the blockade enforced by Israel and Egypt since the militant group overran Gaza in 2007.
Abu Obeida, the al-Qassam spokesman, appeared on the group’s Al-Aqsa TV station and said Hamas was “ready to go to war again.” He threatened to launch a long-term war of attrition that would cripple life in Israel’s big cities and disrupt air traffic at Israel’s international airport in Tel Aviv.
Israel has said that the militants must disarm first, a demand dismissed by Hamas.
The blockade, which Israel says is needed to prevent weapons from reaching Gaza, has led to widespread hardship in the Mediterranean seaside territory. Movement in and out of Gaza is limited, and the economy has ground to a standstill and unemployment is over 50 percent.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed a tough reaction if Hamas renews hostilities.
Nearly 1,900 Palestinians, three-quarters of them civilians, have been killed, more than 9,000 wounded and about 250,000 people made homeless, according to Palestinian medical officials and the United Nations. Israel has lost 64 soldiers and three civilians.
