GAZA/JERUSALEM, Aug 7 (Reuters) – Israel and Palestinian militants have agreed to a truce in Gaza from Sunday evening mediated by Cairo, sources said, after a strike on Palestinian targets by Israel during a weekend launched attacks with long-range rockets against its cities.
An Egyptian security source said Israel had accepted the proposal, while a Palestinian official familiar with Egyptian efforts said the ceasefire would take effect at 20:00 (17:00 GMT).
Spokesmen for Israel and Islamic Jihad, the faction it has been fighting in Gaza since clashes broke out on Friday, would not confirm, saying only that they were in contact with Cairo.
Sign up now for FREE, unlimited access to Reuters.com
Sign up
The eruption, reminiscent of the preludes of previous Gaza wars, has worried world powers. However, it has been relatively contained, as Hamas, the ruling Islamist group in the Gaza Strip and a more powerful force than Iran-backed Islamic Jihad, has so far stayed out.
Gaza officials said 31 Palestinians had been killed so far, at least a third of them civilians. Rockets have paralyzed much of southern Israel and sent residents of cities such as Tel Aviv and Ashkelon to shelters.
The Egyptian security source said earlier that the proposed truce would take effect at 2100 GMT.
On Sunday morning, Islamic Jihad expanded its range to fire toward Jerusalem in what it described as retaliation for the overnight killing of its commander in southern Gaza by Israel, the second-in-command of high level that has lost in combat.
“The blood of the martyrs will not be wasted,” Islamic Jihad said in a statement.
The salvo came as religious Jews fasted in an annual commemoration of two Jerusalem temples destroyed in ancient times. Israel said its Iron Dome interceptor, whose success rate the military put at 97 percent, shot down the rockets just west of the city.
Palestinians gather at the scene where the top commander of the Islamic Jihad militant group Khaled Mansour was killed in Israeli strikes, in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, August 7, 2022. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa
Read more
Palestinians stunned by yet another bloodshed – after outbreaks of war in 2008-09, 2012, 2014 and last year – picked through the ruins of homes to salvage furniture or documents.
“Who wants a war? Nobody. But we also don’t like to be silent when women, children and leaders are killed,” said a taxi driver in Gaza who identified himself only as Abu Mohammad.
“An eye for an eye.”
Israel put the onus to stop shooting on Islamic Jihad. “Silence will be answered with silence,” an army spokesman said.
At another potential point, Jews marking the Tisha Be’av fast visited the site of their ancient temples: the Al Aqsa Mosque complex in Jerusalem’s Old City.
Scheduled visits confront Palestinians for whom Al Aqsa is a national and religious symbol. Video circulating online showed some Jews attempting to pray in defiance of Israeli regulations, as police moved in to stop them and Muslim worshipers shouted in protest. Read more
Israel launched what it called pre-emptive strikes on Friday against what it predicted would be an Islamic Jihad attack aimed at avenging the arrest of a leader of the group in the occupied West Bank. Sweeps of arrests against the group have continued in this territory.
The hundreds of rockets launched by Islamic Jihad in response are the reason for the continued operation, according to Israeli Security Minister Gideon Saar.
“To the extent that Islamic Jihad wants to prolong this operation, it will regret it,” he told Israel’s army radio.
Sign up now for FREE, unlimited access to Reuters.com
Sign up
Additional reporting by Ali Sawafta and Ahmed Mohamed Hassan in Cairo; written by Dan Williams; edited by Mark Heinrich and John Stonestreet
Our standards: the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Nidal Al-Mughrabi
Thomson Reuters
A senior correspondent with nearly 25 years of experience covering the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, including several wars and the signing of the first historic peace agreement between the two sides.