DFLP, Islamic Jihad refuse buffer zone along Gaza borders

Member of political bureau of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) Ziad Jarghoun denied on Sunday the Israeli media reports about a Palestinian approval to the establishment of an Israeli buffer zone along the border areas of Gaza.

Israeli media sources have earlier claimed that the ceasefire agreement that was reached on Aug. 2014 under Egyptian mediation included the establishment of a buffer zone.

“We strongly refuse the Israeli media claims”, Jarghoun said in a statement issued on Sunday, stressing that no buffer zone will be established on Palestinian territories.

The Palestinian negotiation delegation that included DFLP, Hamas, Fatah, Jihad, and PFLP, didn’t even discuss this particular point during the Israeli summer aggression on Gaza, according to the statement. “We only agreed on an end to Israeli aggression, Gaza reconstruction, opening the border crossings, and facilitating the people and goods’ movement”, the leader in DFLP underlined.

On the other hand, Jarghoun warned that Palestinian resistance will respond to any Israeli attack or violation to the ceasefire agreement, calling for ending Gaza’s siege and opening its border crossings.

For its part, Palestinian resistance group Islamic Jihad has denied reports that “understandings” had been reached between Palestinian factions and Israel according to which the latter would be allowed to carry out military operations inside the Gaza Strip. In a statement Sunday, the group described Israeli claims that it had agreed to allow the Israeli army to stage limited incursions into the blockaded coastal enclave as untrue.

Islamic Jihad leader Khalid al-Batesh said in a statement on Sunday that Israel failed to impose a new reality on the ground during the 2014 conflict, and would not be able to achieve this goal through the recent spate of aggression this week.

He went on to call for continued resistance against all Israeli attacks inside the Gaza Strip. Israel’s Walla news portal had earlier quoted “security sources” as saying that Israel and Gaza-based Palestinian factions had reached an understanding according to which the Israeli army would be allowed to carry out limited incursions into Gaza.

On Aug. 26, 2014 a ceasefire agreement ended a 51-day Israeli military onslaught on the Gaza Strip in which at least 2,320 Palestinians were killed, thousands of others injured, and vast swathes of civilian infrastructure destroyed.