[IMRA: The Palestinians fired two mortars last night to mark the ceasefire?]

PNA Official: Resistance Factions Agree to Stop Makeshift Mortar
www.ipc.gov.ps/ipc_new/english/details.asp?name=4813

GAZA, Palestine, May 22,2005 (IPC+Agencies)-[Official PA
website]--Palestinian resistance fighters have agreed to halt a wave of
makeshift mortar attacks on Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip, a
Palestinian National Authority official said on Saturday.

Palestinian Interior Minister Nasser Yousef reached a deal in talks held in
the past two days with Hamas to preserve a calm declared by the Palestinian
factions as a result of their meeting in Cairo last March, said Interior
Ministry spokesperson Tawfiq Abu Khoussa.

"Our brothers in Hamas reaffirmed their commitment to the quiet," Abu
Khoussa said.

Palestinians affirm that these attacks came as a response to Israel's
attacks against Palestinian territories.

"While we vehemently condemn the Israeli attacks on our territories, we
believe no one should provide the Israelis with a pretext to continue and
escalate these attacks," a Palestinian official said of Youssef's deal with
Hamas.

Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman, said the group was committed to the calm
but that "resistance operations will come in reaction" to Israeli violence.

On the other hand, the interior minister Nasser Yousef gave directives to
all the Palestinian security and police services to take all the adequate
and necessary measures to maintain calm and keep rules of orders in the
Strip.

In a long meeting with the security officials in Gaza, Yousef asserted that
keeping calm as a Palestinian national and factional consensus is a
paramount goal so as not to drag to fall in the Israeli trap, goading the
Palestinians to a military fighting.