Palestinians seeking truce, Israel not in hurry
Two Palestinian parties say Egypt is playing a major role in efforts to end violence between terrorists, IDF; Hamas says its working with Palestinian factions to broker ceasefire. By Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters
While Hamas and the Palestinian Authority were actively trying to get Egypt on Sunday to broker a cease fire as the IAF hit targets in the Gaza Strip and Palestinian rockets continued to pound the south, Jerusalem was not fervently campaigning for a cease fire at this time.
A high-level Hamas delegation headed by Musa Abu Marzouk arrived in Cairo Sunday for talks with Egyptian officials on ways of ending the violence that erupted after IDF killed Zuheir al-Qeisi, commander of the Popular Resistance Committees, on Friday. As a result, the Palestinians have fired scores of rockets into southern Israel.
Another Hamas delegation headed by Mahmoud Zahar arrived in Cairo a day earlier for the same purpose. The efforts came as various Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip announced that they would abide by a new cease-fire with Israel.
The announcement followed intensive meetings between leaders of the factions and senior Hamas officials, who made it clear that Hamas was keen on maintaining the period of calm that had prevailed with Israel until last week.Jerusalem, however, did not seem in any rush to get the international community to step in and stop the fighting. And, according to Israeli diplomatic officials, the world was not demanding that Israel stop its military activities inside the Gaza Strip.
According to one official, the lack of international outrage at Israel’s military actions in Gaza is because the Israeli strikes have so far been surgical, and have not caused extensive civilian casualties.
The official said the international media has not yet been mobilized because there has not been a great deal of destruction on either side.
“If there is not a great deal of coverage, there is no pressure on governments to intervene,” the official said. He also said that the world’s attention was diverted by bloodletting in Syria.
The official noted that the he current round of fighting was getting only minimal play in the media abroad, a situation Israeli was content with since the more attention on this story, the more pressure would be placed on Israel to stop its military actions.