Israel and Egypt Discuss Gaza Truce

Israeli officials discussed a French-Egyptian ceasefire plan in Cairo today, but Hamas officials have yet to turn up and the Islamist group reiterated its reservations about the proposal.

The Israeli envoys, Amos Gilad, a defence official, and Shalom Turjeman, a senior aide to Israel's prime minister, spent the day in talks with Egyptian officials before heading back to Israel. There were no details on who they met and what they discussed.

Hamas, which has neither accepted nor rejected the plan, has yet to decide on whether to send anyone to Cairo. "It is early to talk about a delegation going to Cairo," Moussa Abu Marzouk, the deputy head of the group's political bureau, told Associated Press in Syria. He added that Hamas was discussing the Egyptian initiative and "soon we will have a position".

In a defiant message another senior Hamas official, Mohammed Nazzal, told Syrian TV the group would never surrender and vowed to fight the Israeli military in Gaza.

The Egyptian-French proposal aims to achieve a "lasting halt" to rocket fire into Israel and secure a withdrawal of Israeli troops. It would also seek the reopening of border crossings between Israel and Egypt, the launch of a reconstruction effort in Gaza, prisoner exchanges and a resumption of talks for an overall settlement.

The president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, whose Fatah faction was forced out of Gaza by Hamas, called the Egyptian-French initiative "a positive element", while Tony Blair, the Middle East envoy, said a deal was possible. "I believe it's possible to reach an accord," Blair said on France's Europe-1 radio. "If we can reach a truce, it's a short-term solution. But for the long term, it's absolutely necessary to have a negotiated peace process" between Israel and the Palestinians.

In New York, the UN security council will resume discussions behind closed doors today to craft an international response after failing to reach agreement last night.

Libya, backed by Arab countries, is pushing for a UN resolution that demands an immediate, permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. It expressed "grave concern at the crisis faced by the Palestinian people". The second proposal is a UN statement, largely written by the UK, with US and French co-operation, also expressing "grave concern at the deepening humanitarian crisis in Gaza" and calling for both the Palestinian and Israeli civilian populations to be protected.

Amnesty International, the human rights group, has accused Israeli soldiers and Palestinian fighters of endangering the lives of Palestinian civilians by using them as human shields.

Malcolm Smart, Amnesty's Middle East program director, said: "Our sources in Gaza report that Israeli soldiers have entered and taken up positions in a number of Palestinian homes, forcing families to stay in a ground-floor room while they use the rest of their house as a military base and sniper position. This clearly increases the risk to the Palestinian families concerned and means they are ... being used as human shields."

Amnesty said Palestinian gunmen were also continuing to fire at Israeli troops from areas close to civilian homes, endangering their inhabitants.