GAZA CITY 

Israel took Palestinian negotiators all the way to Cairo, making them believe it was serious about reaching a permanent ceasefire deal – until it obtained the intelligence needed to assassinate leaders of the Palestinian resistance in Gaza, Palestinian analysts said Thursday.

Israel, they said, had pulled its negotiators out of indirect ceasefire talks with their Palestinians counterparts in Cairo once it had gathered the necessary data about Palestinian military commanders in the embattled Gaza Strip.

The Israeli government, they added, had wanted to kill certain military commanders in order to raise Israeli morale.

The Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Palestinian faction Hamas, said Thursday that three of its senior commanders had been killed by an Israeli airstrike in the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.

Palestinian researcher Hani al-Masri contends that the withdrawal of Israeli negotiators from the talks in Cairo was a mere "trick" by Israel, allowing the latter to target high-priority resistance figures in the Gaza Strip.

According to al-Masri, Israel simply wanted to buy time at the Cairo talks until it had the necessary intelligence to target certain Brigades commanders.

"Israel badly wanted a military victory in Gaza," al-Masri, director of the Badael Center for Studies and Research, a Gaza-based think tank, told Anadolu Agency.

"Now it is touting the assassination of the three Qassam commanders as an achievement," he added.

Israel tried to assassinate Brigades commander Mohamed Deif on Tuesday. But a strike on a house in which Deif had stayed only succeeded in killing his wife and young daughter, along with several other Palestinians.

Tough mission

Al-Masri and other like-minded analysts say the latest assassinations will make it more difficult for the two sides to reach a permanent ceasefire deal.  

Hani al-Basous, a political science professor at the Islamic University of Gaza, agrees, saying Israel never took the indirect ceasefire talks in Cairo seriously.

He said Israel wanted its negotiators to procrastinate in Cairo to allow enough time to collect information about Palestinian military commanders' movements.

"The movement of Hamas commanders during the two weeks of calm in Gaza [during which indirect talks were being held in Cairo] gave Israel adequate time to collect enough information to assassinate them and achieve the victory it was desperately seeking," al-Basous said.

He said the situation in Gaza was headed towards more escalation even as political efforts were underway aimed at hammering out a permanent ceasefire arrangement.

Palestinian political science professor Mukhaimar Abu Saada, for his part, agreed that Israeli intelligence had managed to collect information about Hamas military commanders during the ceasefire talks.

"Israel managed to obtain critical information, especially during the last two days of the talks," Abu Saada, who teaches at Al-Azhar University in Gaza, said. "That's why its negotiators abruptly left Cairo."

Israel resumed its onslaught on the Gaza Strip late Tuesday after claiming that rockets had been fired at it from the coastal territory.

Earlier this month, Palestinian and Israeli negotiators engaged in Egypt-brokered indirect talks aimed at reaching a permanent ceasefire – but these failed to bear fruit.

At least 58 Palestinians have been killed by Israel since the latter resumed its attacks on Gaza on Tuesday, bringing the total number of Palestinians killed by Israel – since hostilities began early last month – to 2075.

By Nour Abu Aisha 

www.aa.com.tr/en