Hamas offers Israel a truce over latest fighting

An Israeli paramedic and border police survey the damage caused by a rocket launched from the Palestinian Gaza Strip and which hit the Saad Kibbutz in southern Israel on June 20, 2012. / GettyImages

(CBS/AP) JERUSALEM - Amid spiraling violence, the military wing of Hamas said Wednesday it is ready to declare an Egyptian-brokered truce with Israel, according to multiple reports.

Hamas is committed to halt three days of fighting, "as long as the occupation [Israel] stops this aggression", the al-Qassam Brigades said in a statement, reports the BBC.

There was no immediate response to the cease-fire announcement from Israel, CNN reports. Israel claims more than 75 rockets had been fired into its territory from Gaza in the past three days, although Hamas claims more than 100 rockets and mortars had crashed into Israel this week.

An estimated eight Palestinians have been killed in Israeli air strikes in Gaza since Monday, BBC reports, adding that several Israelis have been hurt in the hail of rocket fire from Gaza.

Before the ceasefire offered, Israeli aircraft fired missiles Wednesday at Gaza militants involved in a deadly infiltration from Egypt earlier in the week, killing one and severely wounding the other, the military claimed. It was Israel's first official linking of the ambush to Gaza militants. Earlier, an al Qaeda-linked group had claimed responsibility for the ambush.

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The infiltration on Monday was part of a broader spike of attacks drawing retaliatory Israeli airstrikes, including one Wednesday that killed a 14-year-old Palestinian youth and brought the week's death toll in Gaza to nine, Palestinian officials said.

Late Wednesday, Hamas released a statement offering to stop the fire if Israel stops its attacks. It said Egypt urged implementation of a truce. A day earlier, Islamic Jihad released a similar statement, but the exchanges continued.

The flare-up has been the most serious in months, drawing in militants from Gaza's ruling Hamas group, which has largely refrained from attacking Israel since a war more than three years ago. Although neither side seems interested in seeing the violence spiral into another war, clashes could easily escalate if casualties multiply.

Palestinian health officials said Moumen al-Adam, 14, was killed in an airstrike in Gaza City that injured his father and two women. The Israeli military confirmed an attack in the area but had no further information.

It identified the two militants it targeted over the attack from Egypt as Mohammed Rashan and Ghaleb Irmilat. It said Rashan was a member of Tawhid and Jihad, a group affiliated with the al Qaeda terror group and that Irmilat assisted him in planning the attack.

No Palestinian militant group claimed the men, who were killed while riding a motorcycle in southern Gaza.

Israeli officials have been concerned that the increasingly lawless Sinai will become a hinterland for Gaza militants, who can sneak across the Gaza-Egypt border through smuggling tunnels.

Monday's attack was further evidence of the stepped-up militant activity in the Egyptian desert area, which descended into unprecedented turmoil after longtime President Hosni Mubarak was ousted by a popular uprising early last year. Israeli and Egyptian security officials say the desert area harbors an array of militant groups, including Palestinian radicals and jihadists inspired by al Qaeda.

In Monday's attack, two militants slipped into Israel across its porous border with the Sinai and killed an Israeli Arab construction worker who was on a crew building a security fence meant to avert such attacks. A little known group, the Mujahedeen Shura Council of Jerusalem, identified an Egyptian and a Saudi as the ones who carrying out the attack, but there was no way to verify that claim.

[stopoil]

Palestinians who are Muslim with an agenda to kill Jews, destroy Israel and replace it with an Islamic state is the only reason there is no Middle East peace. The issues are blaring at us, their fundamental Islamic agenda to destroy Israel and never make peace is even written into the Hamas charter, their Iranian funding, its weapons stockpile and smuggling, its political actions to block peace, its propaganda campaigns to influence world opinion against Israel, its restrictions on dissent, its brainwashing on its youth to hate Jews and destroy Israel, its hideous portrayal of Jews, in schools and their mosques. But the press is silent on this.
The USA has been at war with the same Hamas Islamic fundamentalism for decades with over 10,000 Americans having been killed and over a trillion of dollars and counting. Hey, but maybe that is not enough of a story to get the hypocritical press to point out the obvious, the elephant of the room. The politically correct continue to cower. Why are there no reports and outrage against the Palestinians to get them to elect a moderate government willing to make peace with Israel? Why are there no reports on the lack of campaigns by American Muslims against Hamas and others like Hezbollah that are responsible for 10,000 American deaths and over a trillion dollars that have been wasted? Why no response to crazy hypocritical anti Israel people like black American author Alice Walker? So Hamas starts firing rockets into Israel, Israel fires back and Hamas calls Israel the aggressor. The truth is the Palestinian Muslim agenda to kill Jews and destroy Israel is ignored while Israel protecting itself it and under the microscope. From the Inquisition, to the Holocaust, today's anti-Semitism is in the not so well hidden form of anti Israeli rhetoric and must be recognized for what it is and exposed.

[SadieMae68]

Hamas offers a truce? Really? A criminal terrorist group actually thinks they have some say on an official level?

Israel should light up the entire Gaza strip and rid the world of these criminal Palestinians. Palestinians will NEVER accept Israel as a dominent force in the region. They are incapable of peace with their neighbors.

[ckd1358]

War is hell, or so said General Sherman. Does Hamas thinks it can just fire rockets on civilians, and when they get low on ammunition, declare a halt? That is not how war works. These endless rounds of violence followed by ceasefires is ridiculous. Nothing is ever settled or resolved. Maybe Israel should handle Hamas the way the US handled Hitler, unconditional surrender. Keep fighting until they sue for peace. The current process won't change anything in a dozen lifetimes.

[cbsnews_viewer]

Israel can not or they would. Hamas can not do its will against Israel either. So it goes on like a weird episode of the twilight zone.