Egypt FM: Hamas must stop rockets in any truce
Ahmed Aboul-Gheit criticizes Hamas for 'serving Israel opportunity on a golden platter to hit Gaza' while Turkish, Egyptian leaders meet to discuss joint initiative to stop Gaza violence
Egypt's foreign minister said Thursday that Hamas must ensure rocket fire stops in any truce deal to halt Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip, criticizing the Palestinian terrorists for giving Israel an excuse to launch the bombardment.
Ahmed Aboul Gheit's comments came as Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with Egypt's president, part of a tour by the Turkish leader to work out an Egyptian-Turkish initiative to end the violence.
Erdogan said Hamas should stop firing rockets on Israeli towns and halt any other attacks. "There should be a ceasefire immediately," Erdogan told reporters through an interpreter. "As promised in the (truce) agreement in June 2008, lifting the blockade should happen," he said.
The Egyptian-Turkish initiative calls for a halt to Israel's assault, a return to a Hamas-Israel truce and an international mechanism to ensure the opening of Gaza border crossings. Erdogan met a day earlier with Syrian President Bashar Assad and was expected to head to Saudi Arabia on Saturday.
"We expressed our intention that we are ready to take the Palestinian issue, with cooperation and coordination with Egypt, to the Security Council," Erdogan said. "Our call to Israel now is to halt its fire and to the other side to stop firing rockets and other attacks."
Aboul Gheit said any eventual truce agreement should include a mechanism to oversee "that everything proceed without one side causes problems with the other."
He told journalists that the mechanism could involve "international forces or Arab forces or just observers."
Israeli officials have said they want international monitors to ensure compliance with any truce. It was not clear whether the mission of monitors proposed by Aboul Gheit would be to ensure the truce or be limited to observing border crossings.
Aboul Gheit said Israel must immediately halt its offensive, but he insisted Hamas must commit to enforcing a halt to rockets. "We expect the Palestinian side to say that if a cease-fire is announced, we'll stop firing rockets," he said, warning that "some loose group can decide to continue firing rockets and make it difficult to have a cease-fire."
Gaza 'on a golden platter'
He criticized Hamas, saying Egypt had seen "the signals that Israel was determined to strike Hamas in Gaza for the past three months. They practically wrote it in the sky."
"Unfortunately, they (Hamas) served Israel the opportunity on a golden platter to hit Gaza," he said.
Aboul Gheit repeated Egypt's argument that it cannot open the Rafah crossing unless Abbas' Palestinian Authority controls the crossing and international monitors are present.
He said Hamas wants Rafah opened because it would represent implicit Egyptian recognition of the group's control of Gaza. "Of course this is something we cannot do," Aboul Gheit said, because it would undermine the legitimacy of the Palestinian Authority and consecrate the split between Gaza and the West Bank.
Aboul Gheit said Egypt had proposed that Arab foreign ministers who gathered in Cairo a day earlier request Hamas allow Palestinian Authority control of Rafah. But Syria rejected the proposal, he said.
