Israel and Hamas halted fighting in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, but with wider peace prospects hazy, both sides voiced doubt over how long the Egyptian-brokered ceasefire might hold.Just before the truce went into effect after dawn, an Israeli missile strike killed one Palestinian gunman and wounded another near the border fence with Israel in the central part of the Gaza Strip, said medical workers and militants. The truce began at 6 am (0300 GMT) after another day of cross-border violence. Dozens of improvised Palestinian rockets and mortar bombs hit south Israel, without causing serious damage and Israeli air strikes had wounded several Gaza gunmen.
‘Last chance’: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told the Sydney Morning Herald that the truce pact was the militant group’s last chance to avoid another Israeli military incursion into the Gaza Strip.
“I think the strategy of Hamas, which does not want to recognise Israel’s right to exist in the first place, and extremism, fanaticism, and religious dogmatism is the enemy of peace,” said Olmert. In a speech on Wednesday, Olmert had warned that the agreement with Hamas was “fragile and likely to be short-lived”. For Hamas, suspending hostilities should spell some relief from an Israeli-led blockade and may help them gain legitimacy in the West and reconciliation with Abbas, who is in the midst of US-sponsored peace negotiations with Olmert.
Hamas’s armed wing said in a statement published just as the ceasefire began, that it was “fully ready to launch a military strike that would shake the Zionist entity if they did not abide by all the items of the calm”. The truce comes as Olmert also pursues a prisoner swap with Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas and indirect talks with Syria, as well as floating a suggestion of peace with Lebanon. Some of his many critics see all that as part of the prime minister’s efforts to defend his political position in the midst of a corruption investigation that could cost him his job.