Peace efforts intensify in Gaza

Gaza City: Israel struck fresh targets Thursday and waged street battles in Gaza as the international community stepped up efforts to broker a truce to a 20-day-old war that has claimed 1024 lives.

With UN chief Ban Ki-moon in the region to seek an end to the conflict, diplomats said Hamas has accepted an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire, although the group merely indicated support for its "broad outlines."

Hamas leader Ismail Haniya spelled out his conditions for a ceasefire in an article published Thursday in Britain's Independent newspaper, appealing to Westerners to press for an end to Israel's military onslaught.

Hamas has remained defiant throughout the campaign, with its prime minister Haniya insisting earlier this week it was nearing victory over the Jewish state.

But a Gaza-based leader of the group said after talks with officials in Cairo that it did not reject the "broad outlines" of an Egyptian-brokered truce plan, without accepting the plan outright.

"President Mubarak's vision is the only one that was proposed, we don't ask for any amendment to its broad outlines," Salah al-Bardawil told journalists in Cairo.

He said Hamas has "presented to the Egyptian leadership our detailed vision," despite the fact Egyptian and Spanish diplomats said Hamas had accepted the plan.

Ceasefire negotiations

As the toll mounts, ceasefire negotiations have intensified.

An Israeli envoy will meet Egyptian mediators in Cairo on Thursday after a Hamas delegation concluded talks on an Egyptian truce proposal by repeating their demand that Israel withdraw its troops and lift a long-standing blockade on coastal Gaza.

In the West Bank on Wednesday, Spain's Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos, a former EU Middle East envoy, said: "My perception is we are very close to reaching a ceasefire. They are very close but still there is some work to be done."

In Cairo, Hamas official Salah Al Bardawil said: "The movement has presented a detailed vision to the Egyptian leadership so it can continue its pursuit to end the aggression and lift the injustice on our people in the Gaza Strip."

Israel, which wants an end to rocket attacks on its towns and guarantees that Hamas cannot smuggle in more weapons from tunnels to neighbouring Egypt, said it would not agree to a truce allowing the Palestinian Islamists to regroup and rearm.

"Israel seeks a durable quiet that contains a total absence of hostile fire from Gaza into Israel and a working mechanism to prevent Hamas from rearming," said Mark Regev, a spokesman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

In Cairo, Ban again pleaded for "an immediate and durable ceasefire," at the start of a trip that will take him to Jordan, Israel, the West Bank, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and an Arab League summit next Monday in Kuwait.

Germany's Steinmeier, who arrived in Tel Aviv on Thursday morning, praised Egypt's peace-brokering in a joint statement with French counterpart Bernard Kouchner.

"Important progress has been made over the past days in identifying workable solutions," they said.

But Bolivian President Evo Morales said his country had severed ties with Israel to protest the Gaza war, a move matched by Venezuela, whose President Hugo Chavez had already expelled Israel's ambassador on January 6.

In a recording posted on the Internet entitled "A Call for Jihad to Stop Aggression Against Gaza," Al Qaida chief Osama bin Laden called for a holy war to restore "Jerusalem and Palestine."

The offensive has sparked widespread concern about a humanitarian crisis breaking out in one of the world's most densely populated places where the vast majority of the 1.5 million population depends on foreign aid.