Violence Along Gaza Border Marks Official End of Hamas-israel Truce

Sporadic violence along the Gaza-Israel border today marked the official end of a six-month truce between Hamas and Israel.

The Israeli military said Gaza militants fired two rockets into Israel this morning, following heavy rocket fire in recent days, and troops guarding Israeli farmers in fields along the border came under sniper fire from inside Gaza.

The six-month truce has been marred by violence since early November.

Hamas officials declared the agreement dead yesterday, 24 hours before it was due to officially expire. This came after another day of escalating violence, beginning with an Israeli air raid on Gaza, which Hamas has controlled for the past 18 months.

Hamas responded to Israel's attack, which destroyed a weapons store and a rocket factory, by firing eight rockets and five mortars at Israel's southern towns.

"The calm, which was reached with Egyptian sponsorship on 19 June and expires on 19 December, is finished because the enemy did not abide by its obligations," said Ayman Taha, who represented Hamas in talks with other Palestinian factions. "The calm is over."

The truce was due to end today, but has been unravellings ever since Israel crossed into Gaza, killed six Hamas fighters and destroyed a tunnel on 4 November.

So far this week Hamas has fired around 50 rockets. On Wednesday one struck a parking lot near a supermarket in Sderot, the Israeli town that borders Gaza's northern perimeter and bears the brunt of Palestinian missile attacks.

As the fighting escalated, Israel tightened its blockade, forcing the UN Relief and Works Agency, which feeds 750,000 Palestinian refugees in the coastal territory, to suspend food deliveries yesterday.

The eruption of violence follows five months of relative calm in which each side seemed prepared to turn a blind eye to the other's transgressions: Israel maintained its crippling blockade on Gaza and Palestinian militants continued firing a small number of missiles into neighboring Israeli townships. Now both sides are reassessing.

Earlier this week Israel's defence minister, Ehud Barak, reportedly sent negotiator Amos Gilad to Cairo to seek a last-minute extension, but to no avail.

Although neither side is publicly rushing in, both have an interest in restoring the quiet. For Hamas, the truce has allowed it to redeploy its forces from fighting Israel to cracking down on rival militias. For Israel, the truce not only gave the residents of towns such as Sderot a reprieve, but deflated the hard right's push for a full-scale invasion into Gaza.