Hamas said today it has begun talks with other militant factions in the Gaza Strip to urge them to stop firing rockets at Israel.
The talks are a signal that Hamas hopes to avert any large-scale Israeli military operation in the enclave similar to a three-week campaign that ended in January 2009 and in which 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed.
"We began contacts with factions over the situation in the field. Hamas seeks to control the situation on the ground and urge factions to recommit to the national agreement," Hamas official Ayman Taha said.
He was referring to an understanding that Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, said it reached with militant factions two years ago to halt rocket and mortar bomb fire.
In recent weeks, Palestinian militants have stepped up attacks along the Gaza border, answered by Israeli strikes that killed 13 Palestinians, most of them gunmen, in December.
Israel has said Hamas has largely held its fire over the past two years but the surge in rocket attacks meant it was not doing enough to curb other groups, which say their strikes are in retaliation for Israeli raids in Gaza and the West Bank.
Several Hamas leaders have said a new Gaza war would inflict heavy casualties on Israel, but they also have spoken of a willingness for a reciprocal truce to facilitate the rebuilding of homes and infrastructure destroyed in the 2009 conflict.
Meanwhole, Israeli bulldozers cleared the way today for 20 new homes for Jews in East Jerusalem, demolishing a derelict hotel in a settlement project that has angered Palestinians and drawn US objections.
Construction at the Shepherd Hotel compound, whose ownership is contested, was likely to deepen Israeli-Palestinian acrimony as Washington tries to revive peace talks stalled by a dispute over Israel's settlement policy in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, areas captured in a 1967 war.
"We see this matter as extremely dangerous," said Hatem Abdel Qader, the Palestinian official who oversees Jerusalem affairs for President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement.
Reuters