Rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel two hours before the deadline of a 72-hour cease-fire between Hamas and Israel.
Israeli and Palestinian negotiators resumed indirect talks mediated by Egypt on Monday on ending a month-old Gaza war, Egypt\’s state news agency said, after a new 72-hour truce appeared to be holding.
A Gaza cease-fire was holding on Wednesday as Egyptian mediators pursued talks with Israeli and Palestinian representatives on an enduring end to a war that has devastated the Islamist Hamas-dominated enclave.
On a blistering afternoon in southern Israel on Aug. 4, about eight miles from Gaza at the intersection of Highway 25 and Highway 34, soldiers from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) took cover in the shade of a makeshift rest stop — one of dozens set up throughout the south during the recent war in Gaza.
Israel and the Islamist Hamas movement agreed on Monday to an Egyptian-proposed ceasefire to end four weeks of fighting in the Gaza Strip, while Jerusalem was rocked by two attacks that appeared to be a backlash to the violence.
Israel agreed on Monday to an Egyptian proposal for a three-day cease-fire in a four-week-old Gaza war, to start at 0500 GMT on Tuesday, an Israeli official said.
Palestinian factions in Cairo reportedly agreed to a 72-hour cease-fire in the Gaza conflict.
When Israel ended its 38-year occupation of the Gaza Strip by withdrawing settlers in 2005, then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon hailed it as a \”disengagement\” from conflict with Palestinians in the densely populated coastal enclave.
An Israeli television station retracted its report on Tuesday that a ceasefire in the Gaza conflict had been agreed, saying instead there was \”movement\” toward a truce between Israel and the Palestinian territory\’s dominant Hamas Islamists being brokered by Egypt.
Behind the feud between John Kerry and Israel over the secretary of state’s efforts to broker a Gaza cease-fire is a larger tension concerning the role of Turkey and Qatar in Palestinian affairs.
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