Word: egypt
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Meanwhile, a Hamas commander in the West Bank denied reports, apparently passed on by Egypt to Israeli envoys, that the Damascus wing of Hamas wanted to persist with the fighting, while its Gaza leaders wanted to quit. He told TIME, "There's no place in a war for disagreements and splits. This talk of a difference between Damascus and Gaza is just wishful thinking on the part of the Israelis and some Arabs...
...Gaza offensive has greatly weakened Israel's few Arab allies. Moderate Arab countries that were edging closer to recognition of the Jewish state are now recoiling from what they see as the slaughter of fellow Arabs in Gaza. In Egypt, pro-Gaza protests turned into thinly veiled attacks on President Hosni Mubarak's rule, which has helped maintain the blockade of Gaza. The pressure may force Mubarak to support a truce that entails opening the Egypt-Gaza border as Hamas demands, but he is unlikely to soften his position on the Palestinian group that maintains links with Egyptian Islamists...
...Israel will call off its ground assault only if the Israeli envoy now in Cairo, Amos Gilad, returns with an iron-clad promise that Egypt or an international force can effectively stop Hamas' border traffic in weapons and medium-range rockets that are capable of striking deep into Israel. "We won't end the Gaza operation without some kind of suspension of the arms smuggling," one senior Israeli official told TIME. "The next phase is inevitable." Since the Israeli offensive began, the number of rockets fired by Hamas has tapered off from nearly 100 a day to around...
...peace proposal promoted by France and Egypt remains on the table, but for now Hamas has said no to it. The Islamists doubt that Egypt can be an honest peace broker, as it is allied with Israel and the U.S. and is politically antagonistic to the Islamist movement. Hamas says it is refusing Israel's key demand for an international force to be deployed on the Gaza-Egypt border to prevent arms smuggling. "It will be doing the job of protecting Israel, not the Palestinians," said the Hamas official...
...Israel plans to fight on until it is satisfied that it has choked off the possibility of Hamas rearming itself via smuggling from Egypt. But Hamas believes it is winning the political battle. The Hamas official in Damascus said the organization believes Israel played into Hamas' hands by attacking Gaza, earning Israel international criticism and strengthening Hamas' position among Palestinians and in the wider Arab world. "The destruction is such that nobody will dare to mention peace with the Israelis for the next 10 years," he said...