AFTER almost completely halting cross-border rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel, the militant Hamas movement yesterday said it was working with Egypt to advance a "calming" of tensions with the Jewish state.
For the third day in a row, the Israeli army did not carry out operations in Gaza, while militants fired only one rocket into Israel.
The uncharacteristic restraint is aimed at giving Egyptian diplomacy a chance after a devastating Israeli opera
tion last week in Gaza to quell rocket fire left more than 120 dead, many of them civilians. However, analysts say the calm is fragile. "There are many agents of violence and it will be difficult for both sides to control them," Menachem Klein, of Bar Ilan University, near Tel Aviv, said.
Ismail Haniye, the Hamas prime minister, yesterday insisted Hamas was curbing the rocket fire from a position of strength. He said the restraint was in response to Israel stopping its attacks in Gaza "after recognition that it failed" to crush Hamas fighters.
A senior Israeli official visited Egypt on Sunday after the Hamas-Egypt talks, but Ehud Olmert, Israel's prime minister, yesterday denied his government was engaged in indirect talks with Hamas.
But hours later, Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, told al-Arabiya television Israel and Hamas had agreed in principle on a truce.
Egypt is said to be pushing a deal that would include the lifting of an Israeli blockade on Gaza borders and an exchange of prisoners.
The full article contains 255 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
