Israel suspends aggressions, Rice asks for dismantling Hamas

One Israeli official in the office of the prime minister Ariel Sharon said that Israel suspended indefinitely air raids and assassinations of the Palestinian Islamic resistance movement Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, and the artillery bombardment against Gaza and the West Bank.

The official added "we have decided to suspend the strike operations we have started last week to retaliate the launching of missiles from Gaza to Israel."

The Israeli decision came hours after the US secretary of state Condaleezza Rice repeated her call to dismantle Hamas and its weapons in its being "a terrorist movement."

Rice justified, in a speech in New Jersey, her call by saying "political work can not be brought together with armed resistance."

This American call coincided with Hamas's wining of 13 municipal councils for 51 for the Fatah Movement. This was in the framework of the third phase of the municipal elections which took place in the West Bank.