PLO blames Israel for breaking truce

A senior PLO official has blamed the Israeli occupation for the collapse of the 72-hour truce which started on Friday morning and lasted only for two hours.

Dr Nabil Sha’ath said that the Israeli occupation had killed the Palestinians and destroyed their homes in the city of Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip just hours after the start of the truce. The occupation did that under the pretext of destruction of tunnels.

Sha’ath said that when the Palestinian resistance responded to the Israeli violations and killed the Israeli soldiers, Israel announced the end of the truce and started its operations on the ground.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Sha’ath said that the Palestinian delegation is heading to Cairo later on in order to negotiate a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. He noted that the delegation was formed by the Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas in consultation with Hamas and Islamic Jihad who represent half of the delegation.

The PLO official affirmed that the PA had adopted all the demands and conditions of the Palestinians resistance for the ceasefire, stressing that resistance would continue regardless of American and Israeli demands to disarm the Palestinians and destroy the tunnels.

Sha’ath criticised Secretary of State John Kerry who claimed that the truce did not mean an end to Israeli operations against the resistance tunnels.

With regard to the mission of the Palestinian delegation to Cairo, Sha’ath said that it intended to discuss an end to the Israeli aggression; a lifting of the siege imposed on Gaza; rebuilding Gaza, regaining maritime space that allows fishing off the coast of Gaza; and regaining contact between Gaza and the West Bank.