Temporary Gaza truce continues

CAIRO: A temporary Israel-Hamas truce held for a second day Tuesday as marathon, indirect negotiations on a lasting cease-fire and a long-term solution for the battered Gaza Strip resumed in Cairo. A similar, three-day truce collapsed on Friday when Hamas resumed rocket fire on Israel after the sides were unable to make any headway in the Egypt-hosted talks. Hamas is seeking an end to an Israeli-Egyptian border blockade of the Gaza Strip while Israel wants Hamas to disarm. The Israeli military said no incidents between the two sides were registered overnight — neither Hamas rocket fire at Israel nor Israeli strikes in Gaza. The monthlong Gaza war has killed more than 1,900 Palestinians, the majority of them civilians, Palestinian and UN officials say. In Israel, 67 people have been killed, all but three of them soldiers, officials there say. The Israeli delegation returned to the Egyptian capital on Tuesday after a trip back to Israel. A senior Israeli official suggested that the first day of talks had not gone well. “The gaps between the sides are big and there is no progress in the negotiations,” he said. A member of the Palestinian delegation said that in Monday’s talks, Israel had offered a number of concrete measures aimed at improving life for Gaza’s 1.8 million residents, including an increase in the number of daily goods trucks crossing into the territory from Israel, and the free transfer of funds by the Palestinian Authority to Hamas-affiliated government employees in Gaza. Also included in the purported Israeli package, the official said, was an easing in transit conditions between Gaza and the West Bank and an eventual quadrupling — to 19 kilometers — of the sea area in which Gaza fishing vessels are permitted to operate. Meanwhile, a coalition of activists said on Tuesday they would send a flotilla of ships to break Israel’s siege of Gaza by the end of 2014, fours years after a similar campaign ended in a deadly raid by Israeli commandos. “We plan to send the flotilla during 2014,” the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, which includes activists from at least 10 countries, said in Istanbul. The statement was made at a joint conference hosted by Turkish relief agency Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH), which sponsored the first flotilla of ships carrying aid to Gaza that was raided by Israeli commandos in 2010. The group did not give a specific date or an estimate on how many vessels or people would participate. The IHH, which many believe has close ties with the Turkish government, is one of the members of the coalition, which includes groups from Greece, Norway and Sweden. “It is a reflection of the growing worldwide solidarity with the Palestinian people, from the US to Malaysia, from Scandinavia to South Africa,” the Freedom Flotilla Coalition said. Arab News