Mubarak: Resistance legitimate right of any people, but subject to gains, losses

Talks with Israel achieve no progress – Palestinian president

U.N. rejects Israeli policy against civilians in Gaza

President Mubarak said delaying a just solution to the Palestinian cause fuels Palestinians, Arab and Muslim people's feelings of anger, foments more frustration and extremism, and threatens security and stability of the region and the whole world.

Addressing the ceremony which was held on the occasion of Prophet Mohamed's birthday anniversary, President Mubarak said Egypt is pursuing efforts and contacts for reaching a truce between the Palestinian and Israeli sides, to spare bloodshed, to end mutual violence, to lift off the siege on Gaza, to open crossings and to ease down the sufferings of the Palestinians who are laboring under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The President said the success of these efforts necessitates the participation of all regional and international parties including the United States, the sponsor of the two state solution and Annapolis meeting. Addressing the Israelis, the President said history shows that occupation will not last for ever and that security can not be achieved by collective punishment, siege, building settlements, but rather by a just and urgent settlement.

Addressing the Palestinians, President Mubarak said the main goal of all should be the ending of occupation and the sufferings of the Palestinian people and the establishment of the Palestinian state.

He said resistance is a legitimate right of any people under occupation but resistance, like other forms of political action and armed struggle, is subjected to gains and losses.

He said peoples judge resistance by the achievements it reached or by the sufferings it involved. He urged all parties to give peace a chance and not to give pretexts to those who want to elude responsibility.

President Mubarak urged the Islamic nation to adopt a unified stance against those insulting Prophet Mohammed.

Mubarak said Muslims are required to rectify the image of Islam and Muslims and to adopt a new religious discourse based on moderation and tolerance.

In his speech, the president touched on several Islamic issues. He noted that it is sad to see the Middle East, the cradle of the three heavenly religions, become a scene of violence and bloodletting.

President Mubarak underlined the necessity that Muslims should upgrade their dealings and conducts guided by the values of perseverance and hard work.

Egypt is exerting all efforts to hammer out a ceasefire agreement between the Palestinians and Israel, said Mubarak.

He concluded that Muslims are after establishing justice and peace. Muslims seek balanced relations with all world countries based on mutual respect.

Meanwhile, Egyptian intelligence Chief Omar Soliman has postponed the visit in Israel, because the Jewish state did not maintain the commitments made with Cairo to guarantee the calm in the region, Egyptian diplomatic sources in Cairo reported.

Egypt is trying to mediate a truce between Israel and the Palestinian Islamic movement Hamas, which has been controlling the Gaza Strip since last June, after the firing of rockets from Gaza and the Israeli raids in the last weeks.

Despite Egypt's efforts to stop the launches from Gaza, Israel killed five Palestinians in Bethlehem and in Tulkarm, thus thwarting the Egyptian commitment, the sources reported.

Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams met in an effort to resume peace talks, local daily Jerusalem Post reported on its website.

Ahmed Qurei, chief Palestinian negotiator, said he downgraded the meeting to unofficial as a protest against the Israeli construction plans. Prior to the meeting, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said during a joint press conference with visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel that Israel would continue to build homes in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Homa, calling Har Homa an "inseparable" part of Jerusalem.

"We completely reject the building, not only one room, but also one brick in any of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem," Qurei was quoted as saying.

Only Qurei and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni attended the two-hour meeting, Livni's spokesman Arye Mekel said.

Earlier, Livni had said that the war on terror would not put peace negotiations on hold, according to Jerusalem Post.

"Whoever claims that we must cease negotiations should be straight with themselves and explain how that would end terror," the foreign minister said during a Knesset (parliament) debate over a no-confidence motion proposed by an Israeli party Yisrael Beiteinu.

However, she stressed that negotiations would not deter action against terror.

"Since the Palestinian government has no ability to control what takes place in Gaza, it is obligated to let Israel act to defend its citizens," the foreign minister said.

The negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians were launched at a U.S.-hosted peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland last November. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas temporarily suspended the negotiations earlier this month after an Israeli offensive in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip killed more than 120 Palestinians.

However, Israel said the incursion was meant to counter rocket attacks by Palestinian militants from the coastal enclave.

Israel will continue to build its settlements in annexed east Jerusalem, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said, amid international concern the action could hamper revived peace talks.

"When we build in Jerusalem, everyone knows that there is no chance that the state of Israel will give up a neighborhood like Har Homa," known to Palestinians as Jabal Abu Ghneim, Olmert told a joint press conference with visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

"There are places that we will not give up as part of a final (peace) agreement and that is why there is no reason that we stop building there," he said, alluding to large Israeli settlement blocs in the occupied West Bank.

Israel's pursuit of construction in its settlements in east Jerusalem and the West Bank has been one of the major reasons why peace talks have made little progress since they were renewed in late November.

Numerous nations, including Israel's staunch ally Washington, have urged the Jewish state to refrain from settlement construction during the renewed negotiations.

Israel considers Jerusalem, whose eastern half it captured during the 1967 Six Day War, its eternal, undivided capital, a claim not recognized by the international community. The Palestinians want to make the occupied, annexed eastern part of the Holy City the capital of their promised state. The international community considers all Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land to be illegal.

For its part, the U.S. administration tries to make some developments before President's Bush visit to the region next May. However a senior official in the U.S. administration said his country does not intend to impose any decisions on Israel to improve talks with the Palestinian Authority.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Hamas holds secret talks with Israel in Tel Aviv.

In statements to media men and editors of the newspapers at the Palestinian ambassador in Amman, the president said that Hamas holds political and security talks with Israel within attempts to reach into a truce to protect Hamas leaders from the Israeli assassinations.

“An agreement has been reached between Egypt and Israel to reopen Rafah crossing,” Abbas noted.

He stressed on the importance of opening the crossing with the quintuple agreement which includes the EU, Israel, PNA, Egypt and the U.S., explaining that opening the crossing without a regional agreement does not serve the Palestinian cause and negatively affect the Palestinian people.

On negotiations with Israel, President Abbas said there are talks under way now on the pending issues; Jerusalem, Refugees, borders, security, water and settlements.

He warned of grave consequences if negotiators failed to reach into an agreement this year.

The Palestinian presidency released a statement denying claims published on Israeli websites that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas intends to halt the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks.

According to the statement published by the official Palestinian news agency Wafa, the Israeli news reports were "baseless and incorrect" and were "aimed at distorting the credibility of the Palestinian president and his commitment to the peace process."

The Israelis intend to renege on their commitments, especially suspending settlement activities, the statement added.

The president’s Political Advisor Nimr Hamad said that Israel escalated aggressions on the West Bank to destroy all peace talks and the Egyptian efforts to reach to a truce with the Palestinian factions.

Israel would continue to operate against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, despite a recent relatively calm in rocket fire, local daily Ha'aretz quoted Defense Minister Ehud Barak as saying.

Barak said that "the fighting is ongoing and will continue and will at times increase and decrease," adding the defense establishment's goal was to stop the rocket fire at Israel and the terror emanating from Gaza, while dramatically reducing weapon smuggling into the strip.

A ceasefire can only be considered once these things materialize, he stressed.

Earlier, a senior army official said that Israel army continues its defensive operations in the Gaza Strip, including attacks on Qassam rocket launching cells, while refraining from striking other militant targets.

Responding to recent reports about a truce reached between Israel and the Islamic Hamas movement, the official of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) explained that the army currently concentrates on eliminating Qassam cells that operate from within the Gaza Strip, upon orders from the political echelon to limit operation scale.

Meanwhile, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said that no comprehensive ceasefire had been reached with Israel, though other Hamas officials said their leaders would talk to Egypt in the next day or two to continue the efforts to work out a deal.

Despite the denials on both sides regarding a truce, Israeli aircraft operations over Gaza have dramatically reduced in recent days and strikes on militants targets have been suspended.

IDF ground operations have also been reduced, while routine operations along the Gaza border fence are set to carry on as usual and in accordance with security estimates.

Israeli forces killed four Palestinian militants in the occupied West Bank; hours after the Gaza Strip's Hamas rulers demanded a halt to all Israeli "aggression" as a condition for a ceasefire.

A source in Islamic Jihad, which lost three men including a local leader, in the Bethlehem raid, vowed revenge. Hamas said such Israeli attacks risked killing off any chance for calm.

Islamic Jihad is among militant groups that mediator Egypt had hoped to coax into halting rocket fire from Gaza in a bid to bolster U.S.-sponsored peace talks between Israel and the Western-backed Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.

The official Palestinian news agency WAFA quoted Abbas's administration as calling the Bethlehem killings "an ugly crime" and warning Israel of unspecified "consequences".

As part of any truce, Islamist Hamas -- which seized control of Gaza in June after routing Abbas's forces there -- is demanding a say in the future functioning of the coastal territory's border crossings, a condition rejected by Israel.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) strongly condemned the attack, calling the assassinations "criminal."

Nimr Hammad, a political adviser to President Mahmoud Abbas, said in an interview with Palestine Television that the shooting of the four men demonstrates that the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations are futile. He said that such attacks will only generate further feelings of mistrust among Palestinians towards the peace process.

Hammad added that by attacking just before a tripartite US-Israeli-PA meeting with American General William Fraser, Israel is attempting to embarrass the PA.

Chief Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qurei said that the Israeli decision to build more housing units near East Jerusalem was a hurdle on the road of peace process.

Speaking to reporters following his meeting with international Quartet for Middle East envoy Tony Blair, Qurei said that "Jewish settlements are unaccepted and illegal from the first stone to the last one."

He considered the decision to build 750 new housing units in a settlement as "a slap on the peace process face and the international efforts, which are trying to make peace credible." The recent military escalation in the Gaza Strip dealt a setback blow to the newly revived peace talks between the Palestinians and Israel.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas instructed Qurei following Israeli offensive against Gaza to sever the talks with Israel until Israel stops its military offensive against Gaza. Blair, on his part, discussed with Qurei the possibilities of resuming the Israeli-Palestinian talks on permanent status issues. Earlier, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said that the Palestinians are not intending to resume the peace negotiations," until Israel annul its decision to build more housing units in the settlements around Jerusalem."

For her part, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Israeli plans to build new settlements in occupied portions of the West Bank are "not helpful" and violate the roadmap peace plan.

"The United States considers the expansion of settlement activity to be not consistent with Israeli obligations under the roadmap, and we have made that very clear," Rice told a congressional budget committee. "And I have also said that it's certainly not helpful to the peace process."

The Palestinians have said they will not resume negotiations until Israel declares an end to settlement activity after the Israeli government this week announced plans to expand housing units in disputed East Jerusalem by as much as 550 units.

Rice said the State Department is taking steps to ensure that any aid to Israel will not be used in support of settlement activity. The roadmap peace plans was drawn up by the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia and unveiled in 2003.

Rice on met in Washington with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni but it was not clear whether she raised the issue. The United States has urged the Israelis and Palestinians to resume negotiations launched after President George W Bush hosted a peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland.

Meanwhile, Rice said that not enough has been done by the Israelis or the Palestinians to demonstrate their commitment to peace.

"I have not hidden the fact that I think that there is a lot of room for improvement on both sides concerning both their obligations," Rice said. "Frankly, not nearly enough has happened to demonstrate that the Israelis and Palestinians fully understand or are somehow fully acting" on what needs to be done, she added.

"Without following 'road map' obligations and without improvements on the ground, it's very hard to sustain this process," Rice said.

Rice was speaking to reporters traveling with her during a two-day visit to Latin America.

Neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians have fulfilled their obligations under the "road map" peace plan promoted by President Bush, who called a regional summit in Annapolis, Md. in November with the goal of seeing a deal struck by the time he leaves office.

In the plan's first stage, the Palestinians were to dismantle armed groups. The Israelis were to freeze construction in West Bank settlements and remove some of the more than 100 unauthorized outposts set up by settlers since the 1990s.

Israel recently announced several new building projects in east Jerusalem and the West Bank, areas the Palestinians want for their future state. The Israeli moves angered the Palestinians and were criticized by the U.S. and the international community.

Israel's treatment of the Palestinians in Gaza is not helping to create a basis for peace and could cause lasting damage to Gaza's economy, the United Nations' top humanitarian official said.

In January Israel sealed border crossings with the Gaza Strip in response to Palestinian rocket attacks against southern Israel. The United Nations has warned that this has resulted in a humanitarian crisis for the territory's 1.5 million people, most of them depend on foreign aid.

"This doesn't look at all like a basis on which you can build a peace settlement, because at the end of the day, it's got to be built on political dialogue and trust and hope, rather than on despair and hatred and humiliation," John Holmes, U.N. under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, told Reuters in an interview.

The United States has been pushing the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Israel not to abandon peace talks and hopes negotiations could result in an accord before U.S. President George W. Bush leaves office next January.

Holmes said that if Israel thought sealing the borders of Gaza would cause the people there to rise up against the militant group Hamas, which seized power in Gaza in June 2007, there are no signs that it has been effective.

"The idea that somehow it's going to turn the people of Gaza against Hamas or at least stimulate them to rise up against Hamas and throw them out I think is not well founded," he said.

"It's not stopping the rockets, it's not producing the desired political effects, if that's indeed the intention."

Holmes reiterated the U.N. position that the blockade was a form of "collective punishment" for the population of Gaza, which would constitute a violation of international law.

"The consequences of this blockade are felt by the ordinary population, not by those who are deciding to fire rockets, or allowing rockets to be fired, or actually firing them."

Israel's deputy permanent U.N. representative Daniel Carmon said Hamas and Israel have been locked in a state of war due to the rocket attacks. He acknowledged that there have unfortunate "humanitarian repercussions on both sides."

"All the responsibility lies with Hamas," he told Reuters. But Carmon reiterated that all Israel's actions have been defensive, a response to the rocket attacks aimed at protecting its population and territory.

But Holmes, who recently visited Gaza to see the situation on the ground, said some of the damage being done to Gaza's economy due to the blockade could be very long-lasting.

"You're in danger of getting into a position where the damage is such that it's more or less irreversible," he said.

He said there have been "marginal improvements" with regard to the number of trucks with humanitarian aid allowed into Gaza though he hoped discussions with Israeli authorities would result in further improvements.

Holmes also said the situation in the West Bank, although much better than in Gaza, was far from ideal.

He said Israeli settlements were being expanded there, construction continued on a security barrier the U.N. says is illegal, and many roads were off limits to Palestinians.

"You could imagine that Israel would be pursuing a policy of being very generous to the West Bank and showing what can happen if it's run not by Hamas, but that's not what's happening," he said.

Deputy Prime Minister Haim Ramon said Israel must dismantle some of its more than 100 unauthorized West Bank outposts in order to maintain good ties with Washington.

"To my great regret, we have not done what we should have done for a long time concerning the outpost settlements," Ramon, a close ally of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, told public radio.

"We have to act as soon as possible. We will have to take decisions in one or two weeks."

According to the 2003 internationally-drafted roadmap at the heart of the US-sponsored peace process, Israel is required to freeze all settlement activity and dismantle outposts established after March 2001.

"These decisions are difficult, but we will have to dismantle these outposts, at least some of them, because it troubles our relations with the United States," Ramon said.

"Everything damaging those relations impacts Israeli national security,” he added.

The spokesman for the German government said Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas asked Chancellor Angela Merkel to discuss the Israeli settlement issue during her visit to the occupied territories on Sunday.

"Merkel phoned Abbas, who updated her with the Israeli-Palestinian talks and the situation in Gaza," the spokesman said in a statement.

"Abbas asked the German chancellor to discuss with the Israeli government the establishment of settlements issue which complicates bilateral talks and hinders the implementation of the roadmap peace plan," the statement explained.