GAZA CITY — A proposal from Palestinian factions to stop rocket attacks in exchange for an end to Israeli offensives in Gaza and the West Bank was rejected as inadequate by Israel on Friday.

Just hours after a spokesman for the ultra-radical Islamic Jihad made the offer following an overnight meeting between rival factions, a Hamas militant was killed during ongoing Israeli operations in the northern Gaza Strip.

“We are getting nothing from these rockets because nothing they achieve matches the force and power of the Israeli response,” Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas declared in Gaza City late Thursday.

“We talked about the rocket fire. There is an agreement to stop the fire in exchange for a halt to Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza,” the Jihad spokesman said after inter-faction talks.

“This idea will be transmitted to the Israelis by Abu Mazen (Abbas). If they accept, there will perhaps be a stop to fire on Israeli towns but not a general truce,” Khader Habib added.

But Israel did not accept the offer, with government spokeswoman Miri Eisin describing it as a “partial ceasefire” impossible to take seriously.

“The suggestion concerns a partial ceasefire, limited to rocket fire from the Gaza Strip in exchange for a total halt to Israeli operations on all fronts. This is not serious,” she told AFP.

“Israel has always aspired to an end to violence and we count on a change of attitude from the Palestinians and primarily Hamas in order to give development a priority in the Gaza Strip instead of continued attacks,” she added.

The army, meanwhile, said three rockets fired from the territory exploded in Israel overnight, one of which damaged a commercial centre in the town of Sderot, where two people have died in such attacks in the last 10 days.

A spokesman for the Islamist movement Hamas, which heads the internationally boycotted Palestinian government, and an independent MP involved in the faction talks said there could be no way forward if Israel remained intransigent.

“There is no chance of a truce as long as the enemy aggression continues,” said Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum.

“If the enemy agrees to withdraw from the zones it is occupying and top its operations, we can look at something else,” he added.

Independent MP Mustapha Barghuti lashed out, branding the Israeli reaction “very discouraging”.

“Israel is responsable for the cycle of violence. Each time Palestinians want an end of violence, Israel refuses. Israel is the one that does not want to stop the cycle of violence,” he told AFP in Gaza City.

The Jihad spokesman had said that Hamas, Abbas’s Fatah movement, his own faction and the Popular and Democratic Fronts for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP and DFLP) had accepted the agreement.

A spokesman for the cabinet headed by Hamas, whose armed wing on Thursday claimed its first suicide attack in almost two years when a grandmother blew herself up in Gaza, also said there was willingness for a mutual halt.

“The Palestinian groups are ready to stop the rocket fire if Israel agrees to stop all forms of aggression. If there is such a halt, there will be a halt to the (rocket fire),” said Ghazi Hamad.

But Tawfiq Abu Khussa, a spokesman for Fatah said talks needed more time, saying the movement was talking about an “unconditional”  halt to violence.

Israeli troops have stepped up an air and ground offensive in the northern Gaza Strip in a bid to counter near daily Palestinian rocket attacks.

Ayman Juda, 22, a Hamas militant was killed by Israeli fire in Beit Lahiya, a medic said. An army spokeswoman said she was ”checking” the report.

Seven Palestinians, including at least four militants, were killed by Israeli fire in the territory on Thursday.

Source: AFP