Palestinians inspect the house where Marwan Qawasmeh and Amer Abu Eisha were killed in Hebron yesterday.
Israel and the Palestinians agreed yesterday to resume talks late next month on cementing a Gaza ceasefire, allowing time for Palestinian factions to resolve internal differences which could threaten the Egyptian-mediated negotiations.
Yesterday’s meetings began in Cairo around noon under the leadership of Egyptian intelligence, having been delayed for almost three hours while Palestinian factions discussed whether to withdraw in protest over Israel’s killing of two Hamas members in Hebron hours before the talks were set to begin.
Israel said the two men abducted and killed three Israeli youths in the occupied West Bank in June, touching off a chain of events that led to the July-August war in Gaza.
The Palestinian delegation condemned the killings but said it would not give Israel a pretext “to escape” commitments made in an August 26 truce that called for talks within a month to agree long-term border arrangements for the blockaded Gaza Strip.
Fifty days of conflict between Hamas and Israel devastated some Gaza districts. More than 2,100 Palestinians, most of them civilians, were killed in the fighting, according to the Gaza health ministry.
Sixty-seven Israeli soldiers and six civilians in Israel were also killed. Israel launched the offensive on July 8 with the declared aim of halting cross-border rocket salvoes by Hamas and other militant groups.
Egyptian-mediated talks in July and August succeeded in securing a series of ceasefires aimed at laying the groundwork for talks on a broader deal.
Palestinian delegates said yesterday’s meetings were intended to set the tone for wider negotiations that will take place in late October, after the end of upcoming Jewish and Muslim religious holidays.
“Each side proposed the headline files that it wants to include on the timetable of future negotiations,” Hamas official Izzat Risheq said in a statement on his Facebook page shortly after the meetings ended. “It was agreed (the talks) would be resumed in the last week of October”.
Risheq said Palestinian negotiators had pressed for the construction of air and sea ports in Gaza and for an end to punitive measures imposed on the West Bank since June, including the release of Hamas prisoners.
The Palestinians want an end to the blockade of Gaza by Israel. But the Jewish state views Hamas as a security threat and wants guarantees that weapons will not enter the densely-populated area of 1.8mn people if restrictions are eased.
The Israeli delegation left Cairo early yesterday evening without making any comments.
Efforts to turn the ceasefire into a lasting truce could prove difficult, however, with the sides far apart on their central demands. At the same time, divisions among the Palestinians themselves could make it harder to secure a deal.
A Fatah delegation arrived in Cairo yesterday evening ahead of separate two-day talks beginning today aimed at mending a rift between Hamas and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah faction over a range of key issues including control of Gaza.
The ceasefire struck last month to end the Gaza war included stipulations that the Palestinian Authority, led by Abbas, should take over civil administration in Gaza from Hamas.
But a dispute over the Palestinian Authority’s non-payment of salaries to Gaza’s public sector workers has brought tensions between the two main Palestinian factions to near-breaking point, raising the risk of a return to conflict.
Azzam al-Ahmed, a Fatah official who is leading the joint delegation in Cairo, said in a statement that as well as control of Gaza, Fatah wants decisions related to war and peace to be taken at the national level rather than by individual factions.
This thorny issue will not be easy to resolve and could undermine any broader deal with Israel.
“We cannot take one step forward because all the issues related to Gaza, especially after the war, cannot be resolved except with national unity... and the presence of a government that represents the recognised national authority, and this includes the ending of the blockade,” Ahmed said.
Israeli troops kill suspects in murders of three teens
Israeli troops yesterday killed two Palestinians in the West Bank suspected of the murders of three Jewish teenagers in June, which sparked events leading to the devastating war in Gaza.
Amer Abu Eisha, 32, and Marwan Qawasmeh, 29, whom Israel accused of kidnapping and murdering the teens, were killed “in an exchange of fire” in the southern West Bank city of Hebron, the army said.
The pair were hiding out in a Hebron house and killed when gunfire erupted during an operation by the Shin Bet internal security services and the army’s anti-terror unit.
Residents said they heard shots fired in what appeared to be a clash between the suspects and security forces, and that the army had also broken down the doors of several shops.
Dozens of youths threw stones at the soldiers nearby, and following the shooting, a general strike was being staged across the city.
Sporadic clashes between stone-throwing youths and soldiers continued, but ceased briefly during the funerals of Abu Eisha and Qawasmeh.
Some 3,000 mourners attended the processions and burials, with many waving the flags of Hamas, which has a large support base in Hebron.
Hamas’s armed wing the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades praised the two “martyred fighters”.
Shin Bet said troops had also arrested at least three Palestinians alleged to have helped Abu Eisha and Qawasmeh to hide.
Army spokesman Colonel Peter Lerner said on Twitter that the suspects “no longer pose a threat to Israeli civilians”, and posted pictures of the two men.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the operation, saying the suspects had been “dealt with”.
“I said that whoever perpetrated the kidnapping and murder of our boys would bear the consequences... that we would pursue the enemy, find them and not return until they had been dealt with,” he said.
The West Bank-based Palestinian Authority’s security chief Adnan al-Damiri accused Israel of “carrying out operations to kill (people) and destroy houses”.
Palestinian security forces had known “nothing” about the whereabouts of the suspects, nor “how the Israeli army was able to enter this area”, which is under full Palestinian control.
The June abduction of Naftali Frenkel, Gilad Shaer and Eyal Yifrach from a hitchhiking stop near Hebron sparked a vast Israeli search operation in which hundreds of Palestinians were arrested and at least five killed.
Israel immediately blamed the kidnappings on Hamas militants, rounding up hundreds of suspected members.
Rachel Frenkel, the mother of 16-year-old Naftali Frenkel, one of the three Jewish teenagers, said she was relieved not to have to face his killers in court.
“I’m not all that sorry that I won’t encounter their laughing faces in a courtroom,” she told army radio.
