CAIRO: Israeli envoy Amos Gilad held talks on Thursday with Egyptian officials on clinching a lasting truce with Hamas expected to focus on stemming arms smuggling across the porous Gaza-Egypt border.
The defence ministry negotiator was to head home after spending several hours in Cairo, where the state news agency MENA said he was to meet with senior officials to discuss consolidating the ceasefire in Gaza.
Gilad, a reserve general, visited Egypt at least twice during the Israeli war on Gaza. Last year, he was Israel s point man in talks that led to a six-month Egyptian-brokered truce with Hamas that expired on Dec. 19.
Egypt had also invited Hamas for separate talks on Thursday to shore up the fragile ceasefire that took effect on Jan. 18, but the Islamists will only send a delegation to Cairo on Sunday, the foreign ministry said.
Hamas postponed the visit to allow for more consultations between Egypt and Israel on durable ceasefire that would be acceptable to both sides, a senior official told MENA.
During the 22-day Israeli blitz on Gaza which killed 1,330 Palestinians and 13 Israelis, Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman met separately with Israeli and Hamas officials to negotiate a truce based on a three-point proposal by President Hosni Mubarak.
The Jan. 6 proposal calls for an immediate ceasefire, opening up the isolated territory s crossing points and resuming Palestinian reconciliation talks.
But the thorniest goal will be to find a permanent solution to the root causes of Israel s blitz of Gaza, which include arms smuggling into Gaza.
Israel warned anew on Thursday that the military could launch fresh attacks against the network of tunnels it says are used to smuggle weapons under the Rafah border between Gaza and Egypt.
For the tunnels, nothing will be as it was before, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said. Things must be clear – Israel reserves the right to react militarily against the tunnels once and for all.
An AFP journalist reported from the Egyptian border that hundreds of Palestinian smugglers have resumed work on the tunnels.
During the Israeli blockade on Gaza the tunnels were the lifeline to the 1.5 million Gazans, bringing food, medicine and other essential supplies to the overpopulated territory. Lifting the blockade is a main Hamas requirement.
Israel launched Operation Cast Lead on Dec. 27 with the stated aim of halting rocket attacks from Gaza. It says the rockets are smuggled in through tunnels under the Rafah border – the only Gaza crossing that bypasses Israel.
Cairo hopes that with a deal to secure the border, Israel will lift the punishing blockade it imposed on Gaza after Hamas seized the territory from its rival Fatah in a bloody showdown 18 months ago.
Israel said it stopped the offensive on Sunday after securing a deal with the United States to clamp down on arms smuggling, but Egypt has said it is not bound by the agreement.
Britain, France and Germany have also offered to help prevent arms smuggling into Gaza, with London saying it was ready to provide naval support.
Egypt, which refuses to have foreign observers on its soil or foreign forces patrolling its waters, insists that weapons are smuggled to Gaza by sea and not through tunnels.
On Wednesday, Livni pressed Israel s concerns about weapons smuggling with EU foreign ministers in Brussels. They, in turn, sought assurances that humanitarian aid would be allowed into Gaza.
The European Union has almost 30 monitors at the Rafah terminal but they have rarely been able to work as Israel has often kept the crossing closed, citing security concerns. Diplomats said the numbers could be doubled.
But Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal insisted on Wednesday that there were two more battles with Israel left to be won.
We achieved our aims by forcing the enemy to halt its aggression and to withdraw, Meshaal said from his base in Damascus.
But two more battles are left to win: to lift the blockade and open the crossing points (with Gaza), especially at Rafah which is our gateway to the world.
