White House: Hamas must agree to durable ceasefire
(Updates with White House, State comments)
By Tabassum Zakaria
CRAWFORD, Texas, Dec 29 (Reuters) - The White House on Monday said Hamas must stop firing rockets into Israel and agree to a lasting ceasefire after Israeli air strikes on Gaza killed more than 300 Palestinians over three days.
The United States did not call for Israel to stop the attacks on Hamas-controlled Gaza and placed the onus for ending the violence on the Palestinian faction which Washington considers a terrorist organization.
"The United States understands that Israel needs to take actions to defend itself," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said when asked whether Israel's actions were justified.
The United States has blamed Hamas rocket attacks for provoking Israel after Hamas declared its 6-month-old truce with Israel dead on Dec. 19.
"Hamas has once again shown its true colors as a terrorist organization that refuses to even recognize Israel's right to exist," Johndroe said. "In order for the violence to stop, Hamas must stop firing rockets into Israel and agree to respect a sustainable and durable ceasefire."
President George W. Bush, who is on vacation at his Texas ranch, has not made any public comment on the violence since the Israeli air strikes began on Saturday.
He spoke with Jordan's King Abdullah earlier on Monday and told him that the United States wants to see an end to the violence in Gaza but in a "durable" way, Johndroe said.
Bush also spoke with Saudi King Abdullah over the weekend and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been in contact with her counterparts in the region, including from Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, to get a lasting ceasefire.
"We are encouraging all of the nations in the region to take an active part in rebuilding the ceasefire so that we can return to the relative calm that was enjoyed in the region over the past six months," State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid said.
Bush, who had once hoped to have an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal by the time he left office on Jan. 20, will hand over to his successor, President-elect Barack Obama, the rising tensions in the Middle East along with wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and a U.S. economy in recession.
Rice has regularly briefed Obama and his team about the Middle East conflict, Duguid said.
Israel has attacked the Gaza Strip in pursuit of Hamas targets in the deadliest violence in the territory in decades. Palestinian medical officials put the Gaza death toll at 313.
Hamas, an Islamist movement, defied the Israeli assaults, the fiercest in the coastal enclave since the 1967 Middle East war. Its forces fired a rocket salvo into the Israeli city of Ashkelon, killing one person.
(Additional reporting by Sue Pleming and Jeremy Pelofsky in Washington; Editing by Vicki Allen)
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