An Egyptian TRUCE ULTIMATUM FOR Hamas,
Accept the TERMS you are NOW Being Offered,
Or Wait and Take Your Chances on A NEW Israeli
Knesset Government to be voted in on February 10!
Hamas faces 5 conditions on a take it or leave it Basis,
Hamas sees now Israel will be hard nose in future Cases,
If Hamas Returns to its Rockets IDF Will be Off to the Races,
Once Again IAF And IDF Will Return in Gaza
Strip Hamas Faces,
Hamas needs a long truce to rebuild to avoid war that Disgraces,
I Expect Eventual TRUCE Agreement To Extend Into The Year 2010,
And For A Full Fledged Middle East War To initially Begin Before 2015!
January 26, 2009
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/
Egypt cracks the whip for Hamas in long-term truce talks
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
January 25, 2009, 11:10 PM (GMT+02:00)
The Hamas delegation to the long-term truce talks for Gaza in Cairo Sunday, Jan. 25, was given no leeway by Egyptian intelligence minster Gen.
Omar Suleiman, Cairo’s senior negotiator, DEBKAfile’s military sources disclose.
This contradicts the impression given by Hamas.
Either accept our terms, he told them with exceptional brusqueness, or wait two-three months and take your chances on a new Israel government to rise after its Feb. 10 general election.
Their only other option now, said Suleiman, was to return to Damascus, implying that he was throwing Hamas on the mercies of Syrian president Bashar Assad.
When Hamas asked for Turkish monitors to be posted at the Rafah crossing, Suleiman said: Here’s the Turkish prime minister’s phone number. Call him yourselves.
So saying, the Egyptian minister left the conference room, leaving junior officials behind to hear Hamas’ responses, which were uniformly negative.
These are the conditions Cairo put before the Palestinian Islamist organization:
1. Hamas must pledge to halt all smuggling into the Gaza Strip, including arms.
2. It must accept a long-term truce for Gaza. DEBKAfile reports Israel is demanding 10-15 years, to be renewed every three or four, while Suleiman proposed a 10-year period.
3. Hamas armed men will respect a 1 km-off limits belt inside the Gazan-Israeli Israeli border fence, refrain from sniper fire and planting explosives.
4. Hamas must keep its distance from all Gaza’s crossings – 6 on the border with Israel, and one, the Rafah gateway to Egyptian Sinai.
5. The verbal abuse of Egypt must stop forthwith.
The Hamas delegates were summarily brushed aside when they asked for Egyptian help to reconstruct the Gaza Strip. Suleiman said assistance would be forthcoming when the Palestinian factions healed their feud and formed a national unity government – meaning when Hamas accepted the Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority rule in the Gaza Strip.
DEBKAfile adds: Hamas came to the Cairo negotiating table in an inferior position. Most its top leaders in Gaza have not ventured to come out of hiding since before Israel’s Gaza operation began on Dec. 27, for fear that the people will vent their fury over the calamity the Hamas-government brought down on the enclave.
Begin Excerpt from Haaretz
Egypt demanding years-long truce in Gaza
By Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz Correspondent and the Associated Press
January 26, 2009
Talks between senior Hamas members and Egyptian officials in Cairo on a new cease-fire arrangement for the Gaza Strip continued late Sunday night amid an apparent disagreement over the length of the truce.
The Egyptians are demanding a truce of a number of years’ dur ation, while H
amas spokesman in the Gaza Strip, Ayman Taha, said the group would agree to a cease-fire of no more than between one year and 18 months. Another Hamas spokesman, Ismail Radwan, said a long-term cease-fire “kills” the right to resistance by the Palestinians.
Hamas and Israeli officials have also indicated that much of the discussion has centered on control of the border crossings in and out of Gaza. Hamas wants the blockade on Gaza lifted. Israel wants assurances that weapons smuggling into the Gaza strip will stop.
“Hamas listened to the Israeli proposal presented by [Defense Ministry official] Amos Gilad, and with it a proposal for a ceasefire for a year and a half, but Hamas presented a counterproposal of one year only,” Ayman Taha told reporters in Cairo after talks with Egyptian intelligence officials.
The Hamas delegation met with the heads of Egyptian intelligence on Sunday who transmitted to them Israel’s positions. Jerusalem has not yet clarified what stance it had presented.
Meanwhile, Taha reiterated the group’s calls for a lifting of the blockade imposed on the impoverished and devastated Gaza Strip by Israel and Egypt as a condition for the truce.
“[Hamas] called for a complete lifting of the blockade and an opening of all the crossings,” Taha said.
Hamas proposed to Egyptian mediators that European and Turkish monitors be present at the border crossings, but rejected the presence of Israeli monitors, saying Israeli monitoring was “a large part of the problem,” according to Taha.
Asked if Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s forces would be present at the crossings, Taha said: “Hamas is the existing government in Gaza.”
Hamas wrested control of the Gaza Strip from Abbas’s Fatah faction in fighting in 2007. Egypt has ruled out opening the Rafah crossing in the absence of the Palestinian
Authority and European Union observers.
Commenting on the talks, Hamas’s representative in Lebanon, Osama Hamdan, told Al Jazeera satellite television on Sunday that Hamas was unwilling to alter its positions to Israel’s benefit.
“The Israelis must understand that they will not achieve through politics what they failed to do militarily,” Hamdan said.
Israel launched an offensive in the Gaza Strip in late December with the declared aim of ending Hamas rocket attacks on its southern communities. About 1,300 Palestinians, at least 700 of them civilians, were killed during the 22-day offensive, while Israel put its death toll at 10 soldiers and three civilians.
Hamas: No reconciliation with Fatah until it ends Israel peace talks
Hamas official Hamdan also said Sunday that Fatah movement must end peace negotiations with Israel before any reconciliation talks can take place.
The remarks were bound to complicate Arab efforts to reconcile Hamas, which controls Gaza, and the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.
Speaking at a rally in Beirut Sunday, Hamdan – a close ally of Hamas political leader Khaled Meshal – said that the group welcomed Palestinian dialogue, but any reconciliation should be based on a resistance program to liberate territory and regain rights.
He also demanded that the PA end security coordination with Israel, and maintained that the Israeli-Palestinian peace process had ended.
“Those who committed mistakes must correct their mistakes through a clear and frank declaration to stop security coordination with the [Israeli] occupation, release [Hamas] prisoners and later end negotiations [with Israel] because the peace process is irreversibly over,” said Hamdan.
“It’s time for us to talk about a reconciliation based on a resistance program to liberate the [occupied] territory and regain rights,” he added.
Asharq Al-Awsat also reported Saturday that Hamas had suggested representatives of the Palestinian Authority be stationed at the Rafah crossing, but that they be residents of Gaza, not the West Bank.
Israel has been allowing some supply convoys into Gaza, though its borders remain largely closed. The Israel Defense Forces says more than 125 trucks a day – on some days nearly 200 – have entered Gaza since fighting ended on January 17th, but aid workers say the numbers are not enough.
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