America Urges Israel To Accept Truce InGaza

Tel Aviv – 8.1.09 – In a surprising move, Israel’s main ally, United States urged them to accept truce in Gaza.  

Joining voice with the rest of Europe, United States on Wednesday advised Israel to accept the ceasefire to the twelve day long offensive in Gaza, proposed by Egypt.

Israeli attack on Gaza however continued despite a three hour truce. The Israeli Government said they accepted the “principles” laid down in the truce proposal advocated by Egypt.  Main feature of the truce proposal is their denial to Hamas the facilities for rearming through the smuggling tunnels located in Egypt.

“The details however needs to be worked out”, official sources at Tel Aviv said.

On its part United State has been pressing Israel over hot line in the wake of proposed action by United Nations Security Council on Israeli attack.  653 Palestinians have reportedly being killed in the attack.

We are trying to move forward,” said a senior U.S. official traveling with Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State to New York where she hopes to push forward the truce plan.  The plan urges a stop to rocket attacks on Gaza by Israel and importing of weapons there.

In the meantime violence continued despite the assurance by Hamas that they are considering the proposals with the assistance of France as the peace broker. “We welcome the French-Egyptian initiative. We want to see it succeed,” said Mark Regev, representing the Israeli Premier Ehud Olmert.

After a pretty long silence the US President-elect Barrack Obama also mounted pressure on the Israeli regime saying that he was “deeply concerned”.  He assured that he would immediately take up the Middle East issues after he assumes office on January 20th.

“I would tackle not only the short term situation but building a process whereby we can achieve a more lasting peace in the region.” Obama said addressing a press conference. Such statement makes the Israeli war analysts believe that they are in with a deadline of 20th January, the date when the new President would be sworn in, to wrap up the Gaza campaign.

The present Bush administration in America also feels that the ceasefire in Gaza is urgently needed.  They however think that the talks were complicated by involvement of multiple parties in the issue.  “We are working to do it as fast as we possibly can”, Dana Perino, the spokeswoman for White House said in Washington to day.