US PRESIDENT INSISTS GAZA COULDN’T REMAIN FOREVER CUT OFF BY ISRAELI BLOCKADE, NOW IN ITS 8TH YEAR
GAZA CITY (AFP) A three-day cease-fire in Gaza that has brought relief to millions entered its final stretch with Israel ready to extend the calm but Hamas hedging its bets.
And US President Barack Obama put pressure on intensive cease-fire negotiations in Cairo by saying Gaza could not remain cut off from the world forever.
Britain, France and Germany have put forward an initiative that could bring EU representatives to the Gaza border, a diplomatic source said.
With the cease-fire due to end at 0500 GMT on Friday, Egypt’s intelligence chief Mohamed Farid Tohamy was holding a new round of talks with the parties on Thursday, with the focus on extending the deadline.
But the Israeli delegation was headed back home on Thursday afternoon, an official told AFP. It was not clear whether they would return to Cairo later in the day.
Ahead of Thursday’s talks, Obama insisted that Gaza could not remain forever cut off by Israel’s blockade, now in its eighth year.
“Long-term, there has to be a recognition that Gaza cannot sustain itself permanently closed off from the world,” Obama told a news conference in Washington, saying the Palestinians needed to see “some prospects for an opening of Gaza so that they do not feel walled off.”
Four weeks of bloodshed between Israel and Hamas killed 1,886 Palestinians and 67 on the Israeli side. Figures released by UNICEF indicate that 73 percent of the victims — or 1,354 people — were civilians. Of that number, at least 429 were children — around 30 percent of the civilian casualties.
In Gaza, hundreds turned out to attend a victory rally where the speakers whipped up the crowd, which chanted back: Resistance, resistance, resistance! “We have won the military battle and with the permission of God we’ll win the political battle,” Hamas MP Mushir Al-Masri told them as loudspeakers blared out victory songs.