Hamas Joins Fragile Israeli Ceasefire

Hamas followed Israel into agreeing a fragile ceasefire yesterday, ending three weeks of heavy fighting in the Gaza Strip, as Arab and European leaders scrambled to agree lasting arrangements to prevent a new outbreak of hostilities.

The Palestinian Islamist movement said it would give Israel a week to withdraw its troops and tanks from the territory but Israel retorted that it would decide when to leave. "The operation is not over," said a military spokeswoman. "This is only a holding of fire."

Seventeen rockets were fired into Israel, three of them after the Hamas statement. But Israeli army officials confirmed last night that some ground forces had started to pull out.

Israel's unilateral ceasefire, which came into effect at midnight on Saturday, was followed yesterday afternoon by the announcement from Hamas that it and other factions were following suit. "We in the Palestinian resistance movements announce a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and demand that enemy forces withdraw in a week and open all the border crossings to permit the entry of humanitarian aid and basic goods," Mussa Abu Marzouk, deputy leader of Hamas's political bureau, said in Damascus.

With the Palestinian death toll standing at more than 1,300 and still rising as more bodies are found under the Gaza rubble, Ban Ki-Moon, the UN secretary general, said he was sending a humanitarian needs assessment team to compile a report within 10 days.

News of the ceasefire galvanized international diplomatic activity. The Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, the chief Arab mediator, called a brief summit in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. "We must secure the ceasefire, and in the next phase make certain that Israeli forces withdraw from Gaza, the crossings are reopened and the siege is lifted," he said.

"I believe I can see a clear path to peace," said Gordon Brown, who announced a tripling of UK humanitarian aid to Gaza, pledging an additional £20m. The prime minister also criticised Israel for using excessive force. "We are yet to discover the full scale of the appalling suffering. But what is already clear is that too many innocent civilians, including hundreds of children, have been killed during the military offensive."

The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, who has been working closely with the Egyptian leader, said: "Israel should state immediately and clearly that if rocket fire will stop, the Israeli army will leave Gaza."

Jordan's King Abdullah, who like Mubarak has a peace treaty with Israel, said it was vital for the EU to co-ordinate with the incoming Obama administration to think of the "day after".

"We need to find a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem immediately," Abdullah said. "If we don't do that, it will only be a matter of time before many world leaders will be meeting again and calling for a ceasefire in this region." It was urgent to keep alive the Arab peace initiative offering Israel recognition if a Palestinian state were created, he added.

A spokeswoman for president-elect Barack Obama said he welcomed the truce and would say more about the situation in Gaza after his inauguration tomorrow.

After an hour of round-table talks and a chaotic press conference, Brown, Sarkozy, Germany's chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the Czech prime minister Mirek Topolanek flew to Tel Aviv to meet the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert. The Gaza crisis is also likely to dominate an Arab economic summit in Kuwait today.

Two crucial questions have to be settled if the ceasefire is to be followed by a return to calm. The first is how to stop weapons smuggling across the Egyptian border to Gaza's Hamas rulers. Linked to that is the Hamas demand to lift the blockade of the coastal strip.

Amr Moussa, secretary general of the Arab League, said the best way to stop smuggling through tunnels under the border was by opening Gaza's crossing points with Israel to allow in commercial goods.

PM's aid package

As well as criticism of Israel for killing too many innocent people in Gaza, Gordon Brown brought three concrete offers to the Sharm el-Sheikh summit: a £30m increase in Britain's £100m aid for UN operations in Gaza to help airlift injured children to hospitals in the West Bank and Jerusalem; naval help for Israel in blocking arms shipments to the Gaza Strip; and training for Palestinian and Egyptian security forces. "We are yet to discover the full scale of the appalling suffering," Brown said en route to the summit. "But what is already clear is that too many innocent civilians ... have been killed."