Hamas Claim of Progress Complicates Talk of Truce
Hamas Announcement Further Clouds Truce Talks
Confusion continued Saturday over the status of cease-fire talks Egypt is conducting between Hamas and Israel, as the Hamas prime minister announced progress regarding restrictions on the movements of fishermen and farmers in the border area, which the Israeli prime minister’s office denied.
One day after Israeli soldiers killed a Palestinian and wounded nine others as they approached the fence on Gaza’s eastern border, some Gaza fishermen said they had ventured past the three-nautical-mile limit, long imposed by Israel, without provoking an Israeli response. The fishermen’s gambit followed an announcement by the office of the Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniya, that the Egyptian intelligence service, which brokered the initial cease-fire deal announced in Cairo last week, told him the limit had been extended to six nautical miles.
But Mark Regev, a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, said Saturday that “nothing has changed on the ground or at sea until it is agreed to by Israel and Egypt.” He declined to discuss whether a meeting had been set for Monday, as the Hamas statement said, on the question of Palestinian movements in the so-called buffer zone, the 1,000-foot strip of land on Gaza’s northern and eastern borders where the shooting broke out on Friday.