Egyptian intelligence officials are engaged in intensive talks with armed Palestinian groups in Gaza in an effort to stave off a security escalation with Israel following last Tuesday's killing of three Palestinian terrorists from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade near Nablus, the London-based pan-Arab newspaper Al-Araby Al-Jadeed reported on Saturday.
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According to the report, Egypt's aim is to prevent any action that could escalate the situation and spark tensions in the Hamas-controlled coastal enclave.
Egyptian sources told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed that senior Egyptian intelligence officials requested that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad leaders in Gaza to maintain the calm along the Israeli border and not order or encourage any actions that could torpedo the process of rehabilitating Gaza. The Egyptian intelligence officials also reportedly asked Hamas to seize control of the situation along the border with Israel in order to prevent such actions.
The sources noted that senior Hamas and PIJ officials used the interaction with the Egyptians to deliver a message to Israel on the matter of prisons, and demanded that Israel "stop the provocations and punitive measures against the Palestinian prisoners."
They also reportedly asked the Egyptians to send Israel the message that they will not be held hostage or mollified by Gaza's rehabilitation, and will not divert them from their primary goals, namely "Jerusalem and the prisoners."
The senior Palestinian terrorist leaders emphasized the need to separate the issues, that the matter of peace and quiet in Gaza was mainly an Israeli demand, and that Gaza "can respond to any aggression." According to the report, the senior terrorist leaders threatened that "the situation will become hell for Israel, not the opposite."
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