Israeli-Palestinian talks underway in Cairo

CAIRO -- Indirect Israeli-Palestinian negotiations over extending a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip and ending a blockade of the battered territory got underway in Cairo yesterday, with both sides taking hard-line positions and much jockeying expected ahead.

Meanwhile, President Barack Obama said yesterday that an enduring stability is not in the near future and will require leaders on both sides of the generations-long dispute to take political risks for the sake of peace and prosperity.

Israel wants the Islamic militant Hamas to disarm, or at least ensure it cannot rearm, before considering the group's demand that the territory's borders be opened.

Israel and Egypt imposed a closure after the Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2007, although Egypt allows individuals to cross intermittently.

Hazem Abu Shanab, a member of Fatah, one of the main factions involved in the talks, said disarmament would require Israel to pull out from occupied Palestinian territory. "As long as there is occupation, there will be resistance and there will be weapons," he said. "The armament is linked to the occupation."

Egyptian mediators have been shuttling between the delegations. In Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended Israel's intense bombardment of Gaza, saying that despite the high civilian death toll it was a "justified" and "proportionate" response to Hamas attacks.

Speaking to journalists, Netanyahu presented video footage he said showed militants firing rockets from areas near schools and Hamas deploying civilians as human shields.

"Our enemy is Hamas, our enemies are the other terrorist organizations trying to kill our people and we have taken extraordinary measures to avoid civilian casualties," he said.

Nearly 1,900 Palestinians have been killed in the fighting, three-quarters of them civilians, according to the United Nations. Israel says some 900 Palestinian militants were among the dead. Sixty-four Israeli soldiers and three civilians inside Israel have also been killed.

Obama, wrapping up a day of meeting with African leaders, responded to a reporter's questions about ongoing negotiations. He said Israel deserves to defend itself from a barrage of rockets from Gaza, and terror tunnels that Hamas has dug into Israel. At the same time, he said the Palestinian people in Gaza need to have some confidence that they will be able to rebuild their communities, pursue prosperity, and not feel walled off from the rest of the world.

To achieve both goals, "there are formulas available, but they are going to require risks on the part of political leaders, they will require a slow rebuilding of trust, which is obviously very difficult in the aftermath of the kind of violence that we have seen," Obama said. "So I don't think we get there right away." He twice repeated that "I have no sympathy for Hamas," which both the United States and Israel consider a terrorist organization.