Israel, Palestinians Agree 72-Hour Truce from Tuesday as Gaza Death Toll Hits 1,865
Israel and the Palestinians have agreed a new 72-hour Gaza ceasefire that would start at 0500 GMT Tuesday, said a senior official in Egypt, which is hosting truce talks.
"Egypt's contacts with relevant parties have achieved a commitment for a 72-hour truce in Gaza starting from 0500 GMT tomorrow morning, and an agreement for the rest of the relevant delegations to come to Cairo to conduct further negotiations," the official told Agence France-Presse.
A Palestinian delegation, including Hamas representatives, has been holding talks in Cairo with Egyptian mediators for a durable truce in Gaza, but Israel has not yet sent any negotiators to the Egyptian capital.
The Egyptian announcement came just hours after Hamas accused Israel of trying to scuttle Cairo truce talks.
Palestinian delegates in Cairo, including members of Hamas and President Mahmoud Abbas' Palestinian Authority, on Sunday agreed joint demands for a planned truce with Israel, including an end to the Gaza blockade.
"Egypt is leading international efforts for a 72-hour humanitarian truce and a mutual ceasefire starting 8:00 am (0500 GMT) tomorrow," one of them said Monday, adding that all Palestinian factions had accepted the proposal.
Another delegate, Islamic Jihad representative Ziad El-Nakhale, told Palestinian radio: "Maybe in the next few hours we will announce a ceasefire."
Egypt, a traditional broker in Hamas-Israeli conflicts, had proposed last month soon after the latest conflict erupted an unconditional ceasefire followed by talks between the two sides.
Israel accepted that plan but Hamas rejected it, accusing Cairo of bypassing the Palestinian movement.
Last week Cairo invited the two sides again to send their delegations for talks to work on a durable, long-term ceasefire.
But Israel refused to send its negotiators, accusing Hamas of breaching a U.N.-backed 72-hour humanitarian truce that began on Friday but collapsed within hours.
Hamas on Monday accused Israel of breaching that truce and of trying to scuttle the Cairo talks.
"The Israeli side is trying to foil the meeting in Cairo by violating the (72-hour) truce," said Ezzat al-Rishq, a senior Hamas official in the Palestinian delegation.
Rishq told reporters Israel was staying away from the talks "because it does not want to bear responsibility for the massacres it has committed" in Gaza.
"Whether the delegation comes or not... it will not run away from its responsibilities. The Palestinian people will pursue them at the ICC (International Criminal Court)."
The Palestinian demands agreed on Sunday include "a ceasefire; Israeli troop withdrawal from Gaza; the end of the siege of Gaza and opening its border crossings."
They have also demanded fishing rights up to 12 nautical miles off Gaza's coast and the release of Palestinian prisoners demanded by Hamas and Abbas.
"There is a consensus among all the Palestinian factions that Gaza can't return to a blockade... it is a natural right of the people of Gaza to live (freely) as any other people in the world," Rishq said.
He said Egypt will "try to press Israel" to accept these demands and that eventually Israel "may change its position and send a delegation at the last moment."
Azzam al-Ahmed, who heads the Palestinian delegation, also expressed hope that Israel may still send a team to Cairo.
This could help "Egypt perform its role in halting the (Israeli) aggression and achieving the Palestinian demands through negotiations it is conducting with the two sides," he told reporters.
Earlier on Monday, members of the Palestinian delegation handed their demands to Egyptian intelligence chief Mohamed Farid Tohamy, the Egyptian state news agency MENA reported.
Egypt is expected to relay those demands to the Israelis.
Israel earlier in the day insisted there will be no end to its bloody military campaign in Gaza without achieving long-term security for its people.
Images of the bloodshed in Gaza, which has claimed more than 1,800 Palestinian lives and 67 in Israel, have sent tensions soaring across the region, earning Tel Aviv strong criticism for the soaring numbers of civilian casualties.
"How many more deaths will it take to stop what must be called the carnage in Gaza?" asked French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius.
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there would be no end without first securing a long-term period of calm for his people.
"The campaign in Gaza is continuing," he said at the end of a seven-hour humanitarian lull which saw violence subside in the battered Palestinian enclave.
"This operation will only end when quiet and security is established for the citizens of Israel for a prolonged period."
Meanwhile on the ground, Israel troops, which had begun withdrawing from besieged enclave at the weekend, largely held their fire in Gaza during a unilateral seven-hour truce, which began at 0700 GMT.
The humanitarian window got off to a shaky start with an air strike leveling a house in a beachfront refugee camp in Gaza City, killing three people, among them a nine-year-old girl, the emergency services said.
The strike cause the house to pancake, leaving a huge pile of rubble strewn with twisted metal rods and broken glass and only a very narrow gap for rescuers to get inside.
"There is no truce. How could there be a truce," raged Ayman Mahmoud, who lives in the neighborhood.
"They are liars! They don't even respect their own commitments!"
Hamas did not observe the truce, firing 42 rockets over the border during the pause, 24 of which hit Israel and another one which was shot down, the army said.
And Gaza medics said they retrieved 32 bodies from the rubble.
A military spokesman later said troops were resuming their operations, "including air strikes" but said they were also continuing to redeploy within Gaza while others were pulling out.
The unilateral truce was announced as international outrage grew over an Israeli strike near a U.N. school on Sunday that killed 10 people, among them refugees who had been seeking shelter.
It was the third such strike in 10 days.
With U.N. figures indicating most of the 1,865 people killed in Gaza so far were civilians, the world has stepped up its demands for an end to the bloodshed.
In Paris, France's top diplomat, an increasingly vocal critic of the war, demanded the world impose a political solution to end "the carnage."
"Israel's right to security is total, but this right does not justify the killing of children and the slaughter of civilians," he said, with French President Francois Hollande urging an end to the "massacres" in Gaza.
Their remarks came a day after the U.N. denounced a fresh strike on one of its schools which was sheltering 3,000 refugees as "a moral outrage and a criminal act," and the United States said it was "appalled."
Israel acknowledged targeting three militants near the school and said it was investigating the consequences of the strike.
Source: Agence France Presse
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