ARMED PALESTINIAN groups in Gaza have decided to halt rocket attacks on Israel, a senior Islamic Jihad commander announced yesterday.
“We agreed to halt one of the means of armed resistance – which is firing rockets at Israel – to avoid Israeli threats,” said Daoud Shihab, an Islamic Jihad spokesman, “but the armed resistance will keep active by confronting [Israeli] raids and incursions.”
The decision to suspend rocket attacks, however, was “temporary” and “linked to the situation on the ground”.
The agreement among smaller factions based in Gaza, reached on Wednesday at a meeting called by Hamas, coincides with rising tensions due to an escalation of Palestinian rocket strikes on Israel and Israeli retaliatory action.
Israeli shelling and gunfire have killed at least 14 Palestinians this month and aggressive rhetoric on both sides has prompted concerns that a new war could ensue if violent exchanges do not end.
Islamic Jihad, the Popular Struggle Front and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine have come under strong pressure from Hamas, which rules Gaza, to abide by the ceasefire reached in January 2009, ending Israel’s all-out offensive against the Strip.
It has caused widespread destruction and has killed more than 1,440 people, most of them civilians.
Hamas’s political leadership has also had to impose its will on the movement’s own military wing, the Izzedin al-Qassam Brigades, which has suspended the firing of missiles into Israel but has ex- pressed determination to continue mounting attacks on Israeli soldiers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Spokesman Abu Ubayda said the force was observing the 2009 ceasefire with respect to rockets to prevent Gaza from being drawn into a new war. “However, if that war erupts, we will not stand by with our hands folded; we will fight fiercely.”
The brigades’ statement was issued a day after Mahmoud Zahar, a senior political figure regarded as a hardliner, said Hamas was committed to the truce and called on other factions to abide by it.
Palestinian analyst Wisam Afifa expressed the view of many in Gaza when he argued that Israel was preparing for a second Gaza war. He said the Israeli military did not achieve its objectives in the 2008- 2009 war – the collapse of the de facto Hamas government and the elimination of armed resistance.
The Israelis “want to restore their deterrence and they know that the resistance took advantage of the ceasefire to upgrade its military skills”. He added: “Hamas is not planning to confront the Israeli army and is trying to avoid providing the Israelis with any pretext to wage war again.”
Hamas has tried and failed to link an end to rocket fire to the lifting of Israel’s siege and blockade of Gaza to allow in construction materials so Gazans can rebuild homes and businesses destroyed during the war.
However building materials are still banned, although Israel has eased the blockade somewhat since last summer following the raid by Israeli naval commandos on a blockade-busting Turkish ferry.
