The Israeli Cabinet met late yesterday to discuss an Egyptian plan for ending six days of Gaza violence that has claimed more than 100 lives, a senior government official said.
The official refused to identify the points of Egypt’s proposal, which emerged following a full day of indirect negotiations in Cairo on Sunday between Israeli officials and Palestinian representatives.
Israeli public radio, however, said Israel wanted to see a 24- to 48-hour truce take effect that could then be used to negotiate the finer details of the full ceasefire agreement. The radio report also noted that most army attacks on Gaza had halted some two to three hours before the start of the Cabinet meeting.
The Government’s decision to address a possible truce coincides with a new round of intensive diplomacy with UN chief Ban Ki-moon in the region for meetings with both Israeli and Palestinian officials in the coming days.
Israel had earlier threatened to expand its offensive should the Hamas movement that runs the southern strip fail to rein in the hail of rockets fired at Israel over the past six days.
But a senior Hamas official had indicated they were ready to hold serious negotiations on a ceasefire proposal that could produce results.
Exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal said yesterday that he would be pressing for an end to Israel’s six-year-old blockade of Gaza as a precondition for any end to hostilities.
But he stressed that “we are not against an appeasement”. “We are for a ceasefire,” Meshaal told reporters in Cairo. “But Israel must stop its aggression.”
Meanwhile two Palestinians died in an Israeli attack on a refugee camp in central Gaza yesterday, pushing the death toll in six days of violence to 103, emergency services said.
The latest raids came on the heels of an attack on Gaza City’s Shuruq tower media centre – the second time the building has been targeted – which killed one person. Elsewhere, four more people died in a bombing of the Nusseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, medics said, and another Palestinian was killed east of Nusseirat in a separate strike.
Another 24 people were wounded in the town, ambulance service workers said, bringing the total number of injured in Gaza since Wednesday to 870.