REPORT: HAMAS LEADERS IN GAZA HAVE OFFERED LONG-TERM CEASEFIRE TO ISRAEL

Hamas wants to tie the cease-fire to an easing of the blockade on Gaza, a green light for large-scale infrastructure projects and a prisoner exchange. </s> The Hamas militant group has said a ceasefire has been reached to end the latest round of fighting with Israel.

The Hamas militant group has said a ceasefire has been reached to end the latest round of fighting with Israel.

Hamas’ Al-Aqsa TV channel reported late on Thursday that a ceasefire has taken hold “on the basis of mutual calm”. It said the deal was mediated by Egypt and other regional players.

A senior Hamas official said the deal would formally go into effect at midnight.

He said the agreement merely ends the latest two-day burst of violence between Israel and Hamas.

He said Egypt would continue efforts to broker a long-term ceasefire. Hamas wants an end to a decade-long Israeli-Egyptian border blockade as a condition for any long-term deal.

There was no immediate Israeli comment. </s> U.N.- and Egyptian-mediated talks on a deal to tamp down tensions between Israel and the Gaza Strip are in "advanced stages", a senior member of the Palestinian enclave's dominant Islamist Hamas group said on Wednesday.

GAZA/SDEROT, Israel: Israel and Hamas, the Islamist group that rules the Gaza Strip, agreed on a truce on Thursday, two Palestinian officials said, an understanding that would end an escalation in fighting that has drawn mutual threats of war.

There was no formal comment from Israel, but an Israeli official who spoke on condition of anonymity denied a cease-fire had been reached. Israel rarely acknowledges reaching any such agreement with Hamas, a group it designates as a terrorist organization and with which it has fought three wars in the past decade.

A surge in cross-border rockets and air strikes in recent weeks have prompted the United Nations and Egypt to try to broker a truce to prevent another all-out conflict.

On Wednesday night and Thursday, Israeli aircraft struck more than 150 targets in Gaza and Palestinian militants fired scores of rockets including a long-range missile deep into Israel, escalating fighting despite the ongoing truce talks.

"Egyptian efforts managed to restore calm between Palestinian factions and Israel that will end the current escalation," a Palestinian official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said. "Palestinian factions will respect calm as long as Israel does," he told Reuters.

A second Palestinian official with knowledge of the talks said the cease-fire would begin at 2045 GMT.

Abu Mujahed, spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committee, a smaller faction in Gaza, said on his Facebook page: “Upon Egyptian and international efforts, a ceasefire between Palestinian resistance began conditional on the commitment of the occupation.”

Hours earlier, after the long-range Palestinian missile attack - the first of its kind since a 2014 war, Israeli air strikes had resumed after a short lull, flattening a multi-storey building that the Israeli military described as a Hamas headquarters.

A pregnant Palestinian woman and her 18-month-old child were killed in the Israeli attacks overnight on Wednesday, as was a Hamas militant, Gaza medical officials said. Hundreds of people took part in the funeral for the woman and child.

The Israeli military said seven people were wounded by Palestinian rockets and mortars that hit southern Israel.

Ambulance sirens echoed through the night in Gaza, where families huddled at home as powerful explosions thundered through the strip. Across the border rocket warning sirens sounded almost non-stop from sunset on Wednesday in Israeli towns and villages where residents sheltered in bunkers.

The Israeli military said its aircraft had struck more than 150 Hamas targets overnight, while more than 180 Palestinian rockets and mortars hit southern Israel.

Twenty-five miles from the border, air raid sirens sounded in Israel's main southern city, Beersheba.

Israeli Army Radio said Palestinian militants had fired a Grad missile capable of reaching Israel's heartland. Police said they found its remnants in an open area on the outskirts of the city of 200,000 people and that no one was hurt.

Israel responded by hitting the multi-storey building, first with small bombs apparently so that people would evacuate, then flattening it with a huge blast that shook the city and raised clouds of dust and smoke.

Residents said the building had served mainly as a cultural centre. Local health officials said 18 bystanders were wounded by the blast. Hamas denied using the facility.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened his security cabinet late into the night on Thursday. A statement issued by his office before reports a truce had been reached said the forum instructed the military to "keep acting with force against the terrorists".

The U.S. State Department condemned the launching of missile attacks into Israel.

"We’ve seen reports that 180 or so rocket attacks have taken place, shot from Gaza into Israel, and we fully support Israel’s right to defend itself and to take actions to prevent provocations of that nature," State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said.

Egypt and the United Nations have been trying to mediate a comprehensive cease-fire to prevent an escalation in fighting and to ease the deep economic hardship in Gaza, a narrow strip of land that is home to 2 million Palestinians.

Israel captured Gaza in the 1967 Middle East war but withdrew in 2005, while holding onto most of the separate West Bank, where Palestinians have limited self-rule.

For more than a decade Gaza has been controlled by Hamas under an Israeli-Egyptian blockade that has collapsed its economy, creating what the World Bank has described as a humanitarian crisis with shortages of water, electricity and medicine.

Israel says it has no choice but to enforce its blockade to defend itself against Hamas, which calls for Israel's destruction and has used Gaza as a base for missile attacks.

Yuval Steinitz, a member of Netanyahu's security cabinet, told Israel Radio earlier that Israel was "not eager for war" but would make no concessions to Hamas.

U.N. Middle East envoy Nickolay Mladenov said the United Nations had engaged with Egypt in an "unprecedented effort" to avoid serious conflict, but "the situation can rapidly deteriorate with devastating consequences for all people". </s> A truck carrying goods to Palestinians arrives at Kerem Shalom crossing in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on Wednesday.

A truck carrying goods to Palestinians arrives at Kerem Shalom crossing in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on Wednesday. Photo: SAID KHATIB/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

TEL AVIV— Israel reopened Gaza’s only commercial crossing on Wednesday, removing severe restrictions put in place last month as talks progress over a long-term cease-fire deal between the two sides.

The opening of the Kerem Shalom crossing is expected to further ease tensions as a fragile truce has largely held since intense clashes last week.

“I decided to reopen the Kerem Shalom crossing ... as a clear message to the residents of the Gaza Strip: peace and quiet are worth it and violence is not,” Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s defense minister, said in a video posted on Facebook .

“The residents of Gaza have much to gain when the citizens of Israel enjoy peace and security, and much to lose when quiet is disturbed,” he added.

Israel closed the crossing on July 9 to pressure Gaza ruler Hamas to stop launching flaming balloons and kites into Israeli territory, allowing only food and sometimes fuel through as Palestinians continue to protest at the fence dividing the strip from Israel.

Hamas and Israel have also clashed, most recently on Thursday when the extremist group launched more than 200 rockets and mortars into Israel and Israel responded with waves of airstrikes aimed at what it said were Hamas military targets. Both sides have reached a series of shaky temporary cease-fires since May.

Egypt and the United Nations are mediating for a longer-term peace agreement between Israel and Hamas, but talks have been slowed by the outbreaks of violence.

Israel’s security cabinet is set to meet Wednesday to discuss a possible longer-term cease-fire arrangement. Officials from Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian groups returned to Egypt on Wednesday for talks on reconciling warring Palestinian factions and reaching a long-term truce with Israel.

The Palestinian Central Council, a legislative-type body of groups in the Palestinian Liberation Organization, is also set to meet in Ramallah on Wednesday where Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will likely talk about the ongoing discussions.

Israel’s prime minister is facing pressure from the right over accepting a long-term agreement because critics say it could allow Hamas time to build up its rockets supply.

Naftali Bennett, a member of the security cabinet and the education minister, said his Jewish Home Party would oppose an agreement based on what he called temporary calm.

“After 130 days under attack and rocket fire, we must not reward terrorists without the return of our captives and our fallen. The terrorists will learn that terror pays, and Israel’s power of deterrent will be harmed,” he said in a statement.

Any long-term settlement must include arrangements for the return of Israeli citizens held in Gaza as well as the bodies of Israeli soldiers Gaza is holding, Mr. Lieberman said.

Israel and Egypt have imposed a blockade on the Gaza Strip since Hamas took control more than a decade ago. The restrictions have severely harmed Gaza’s economy, plunging the strip into humanitarian crisis. Residents face critical shortages of food, electricity and medicine.

Israel defends the blockade and other restrictions as necessary for protecting its security, as Israel considers Hamas a terror organization.

Also Wednesday, Israel expanded Gaza’s allowed fishing area to nine nautical miles after it had previously curtailed it to three nautical miles. Israel controls how far out Gaza’s fisherman can fish, and sometimes decreases the radius as punishment or as a security measure.

Palestinians have been demonstrating at the border fence separating Gaza and Israel since March. The protesters are calling for the right to return to homes in what is now Israel, which Israel opposes because it would threaten the country’s Jewish majority.

The protests have often turned violent, with some people throwing Molotov cocktails, launching flaming kites and burning tires. Israel has responded to the protests with live fire, killing more than 150 people. Israel says the response is necessary to protect its border. </s> The Hamas militant group has said a ceasefire has been reached to end the latest round of fighting with Israel.

The Hamas militant group has said a ceasefire has been reached to end the latest round of fighting with Israel.

Hamas’ Al-Aqsa TV channel reported late on Thursday that a ceasefire has taken hold “on the basis of mutual calm”. It said the deal was mediated by Egypt and other regional players.

A senior Hamas official said the deal would formally go into effect at midnight.

He said the agreement merely ends the latest two-day burst of violence between Israel and Hamas.

He said Egypt would continue efforts to broker a long-term ceasefire. Hamas wants an end to a decade-long Israeli-Egyptian border blockade as a condition for any long-term deal.

An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, denied a deal had been reached. But early on Friday, the situation in Gaza appeared quiet.

The Hamas announcement came shortly after Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet ordered the army to take unspecified “strong action” against Gaza militants as the military reinforced units along the border.

Israel and Hamas have fought three wars since the Islamic militant group seized control of Gaza in 2007. In this week’s fighting, the Palestinian health ministry said three Palestinians, including a pregnant woman and her one-year-old daughter, and a Hamas militant, were killed in separate airstrikes. Israeli officials said seven people were wounded by rocket or mortar fire on the Israeli side.

Air raid sirens warning of incoming rocket fire wailed in southern Israel overnight and throughout the day, sending families scrambling into bomb shelters, cancelling outdoor summer cultural events and forcing summer camps indoors. The Israeli air force, meanwhile, attacked targets across Gaza.

A Palestinian rocket struck the southern city of Beersheba late in the afternoon, landing in an open area. It was the first time a rocket had hit the city since the 2014 war.

Shortly after, an Israeli airstrike flattened the five-story cultural centre in the Shati refugee camp, a crowded district of Gaza City. The airstrike set off a powerful explosion and sent a huge plume of black smoke into the air, causing crowds to scream in panic. Medical officials said at least seven bystanders were wounded.

The building is home to a popular theatre and exhibits plays and other shows on a daily basis. An Egyptian-Palestinian cultural society also has an office in the building.

“The deliberate targeting of a cultural centre with airstrikes and destruction… is a barbaric act,” said Hazem Qassem, a Hamas spokesman. He said the destruction of the Egyptian cultural office was “an Israeli attempt to sabotage” the Egyptian ceasefire efforts.

The Israeli military said the building served as a Palestinian military installation. Hamas’ interior ministry, including its secret police, has offices in an adjacent site, but those offices were not hit.

Despite the animosity, the enemies have signalled, through their contacts with Egypt, that they want to avoid another war. Reaching a deal, however, will likely require major concession on both sides.

Hamas is demanding the lifting of an Israeli-Egyptian border blockade that has devastated Gaza’s economy, while Israel wants an end to rocket fire, as well as recent border protests and launches of incendiary balloons, and the return of the remains of two dead soldiers and two Israelis believed to be alive and held by Hamas. </s> GAZA (Reuters) - Israel and Hamas, the Islamist group that rules the Gaza Strip, agreed on a truce on Thursday to end a flare-up in cross-border fighting, two Palestinian officials said.

There was no immediate comment from Israeli officials. A Palestinian official with knowledge of the ceasefire talks, which were mediated by Egypt, said the truce would begin at 20:45 GMT.

Israeli aircraft struck more than 150 targets in Gaza on Wednesday night and Thursday, and Palestinian militants fired scores of rockets including a long-range missile deep into Israel. </s> JERUSALEM: Gaza's militant Islamic Hamas rulers and Israel appeared to be honoring a cease-fire Friday that ended two days of an intense flare-up in violence amid efforts by neighboring Egypt to negotiate between the two sides.

Israel's military said that no rockets were fired from Gaza at Israel overnight and it conducted no airstrikes in Gaza against Hamas targets. Israel's government hasn't confirmed the truce.

On Friday evening, however, a Palestinian paramedic was shot and killed by Israeli fire at a Hamas-led protest along the border, Gaza's Health Ministry said. The Israeli military had no immediate comment and it was not immediately clear whether protests at the border were included in cease-fire negotiations.

Hamas' Al Aqsa TV channel reported late Thursday that the Egyptian-brokered deal took hold "on the basis of mutual calm." It was the third such truce in recent weeks.

But the deal did not seem to address the deeper issues that have prevented the bitter enemies from reaching a longer cease-fire arrangement.

Gaza militants fired some 200 rockets at Israel and the Israeli military carried out a similar number of airstrikes in Gaza in this latest round of violence.

Also on Friday, the Israeli military lifted restrictive recommendations for residents of some areas in southern Israel that it had set amid the Palestinian bombing, including suggestions to avoid open areas and beaches. "Following a security assessment," residents can resume their daily routine, the military said.

Israel and Hamas have fought three wars since the Islamic militant group seized control of Gaza in 2007. In this week's fighting, the Palestinian Health Ministry said three Palestinians were killed. Israeli officials said seven people were wounded by rocket or mortar fire on the Israeli side.

Israel and Hamas have come close to serious conflict in recent weeks after four months of violence along Gaza's border.

Hamas has led weekly border protests aimed in part at drawing attention to the Israeli-Egyptian blockade imposed after Hamas took control of Gaza. Large turnout at the protests has also been driven by widespread desperation in Gaza, amid worsening conditions linked to the blockade. Power is on for just a few hours a day, unemployment has sky-rocketed and poverty is widening.

Gaza's Health Ministry said Abdullah al-Qutati, 26, was shot and killed and 40 others were wounded by live fire as thousands protested at the border Friday evening.

Another paramedic, Mohammed Suhwail, told The Associated Press he witnessed the shooting. He said after treating wounded al-Qutati " began walking toward the (field hospital) but was shot in the back and the bullet existed from his chest."

Israel has also been battling almost daily airborne arson attacks from Gaza caused by kites and balloons rigged with incendiary devices flown across the border that have sparked large fires that destroyed forests, burned crops and killed wildlife and livestock.

Over the past four months, 163 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire, including at least 120 protesters, according to the Gaza Health Ministry and a local rights group. An Israeli soldier was killed by a Gaza sniper during this same period.

Israel says it is defending its border and accuses Hamas, a group sworn to its destruction, of using the protests as cover for attempts to breach the border fence and attack civilians and soldiers. Palestinians have thrown explosive devices and opened fire at forces along the border in numerous instances over the past few months, the military says. But the high casualty rate among mainly unarmed protesters has drawn international criticism. </s> In this file photo, Khalil Al Hayya, deputy head of Hamas in Gaza, gestures during the Palestinian National Popular Conference in Gaza City on April 29 (Reuters photo)

GAZA/ OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — UN and Egyptian mediated talks on a deal to tamp down tensions between Israel and the Gaza Strip are in "advanced stages", a senior member of the Palestinian enclave's dominant Hamas group said on Wednesday.

The remarks were echoed by a top Israeli lawmaker, suggesting a possible breakthrough after four months of confrontations that stirred mutual threats of war.

Gazans launched weekly, sometimes violent, border protests against Israel on March 30, their anger exacerbated by a grinding Israeli-Egyptian blockade and funding cuts by Hamas' rival, the Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

The Israeli occupational force has killed at least 158 Palestinians, while a Gaza sniper killed an Israeli force member. There have also been several, mostly bloodless shelling exchanges.

Neither Hamas nor Israel, appears keen on another full-blown conflict. But public demands by either side for a detainee release by the other appear to have been a stumbling block in securing a long-term truce.

“We can say that actions led by the United Nations and Egypt are in advanced stages and we hope it could yield some good from them,” Khalil Al Hayya, deputy Hamas chief in Gaza, told Al Jazeera television.

“What is required is for calm to be restored along the border between us and the Zionist enemy [Israel].”

Israel has played down prospects for a comprehensive ceasefire, speaking in terms of a more limited quid-pro-quo.

In return for calm in Gaza, Israeli officials said on Sunday they would reopen a commercial border terminal that had been shuttered in response to the fire damage, and expand a Palestinian fishing zone.

Avi Dichter, the committee of the Israeli parliament’s foreign affairs and defence committee, struck a cautiously upbeat note on Wednesday. “I very much hope that we are on the brink of a new day on the matter of Gaza,” he told reporters.

Neither the United Nations nor Egypt have publicly detailed their proposals for Gaza, beyond saying they should bring extensive economic relief for its two million Palestinians, many of them plagued by unemployment and failing public utilities.

Hayya said foreign donors were collecting “hundreds of millions of dollars” for electricity, water, health and job-creation projects in Gaza, but that these “require stability”.

Israel wants to recover the bodies of two members killed in the Gaza war, and two of its civilians who wandered into the enclave, in exchange for any far-ranging truce deal with Hamas.

For its part, Hamas demands that Israel free Palestinian security prisoners — a proposal that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners balk at.

“We want to free our brave prisoners and we have no objection to beginning now,” Hayya said. “Let it be a prisoner swap deal, [Palestinian] prisoners in return for Zionist soldiers.”

Netanyahu called off a trip to Colombia this week to attend to the Gaza truce talks, and was due to convene his decisionmaking security Cabinet on Thursday to discuss the negotiations. </s> ASHKELON, Israel — Loren Amar was watching TV with her father around midnight when an air-raid siren warning of incoming rocket fire blared through their working-class neighborhood in southern Israel.

Their old apartment had no in-house shelter, so they huddled in the stairway just before a rocket from Gaza slammed into the building next-door, sending shrapnel and debris flying into their bedrooms — and the 29-year-old Amar to the hospital with shock symptoms.

"The walls shook and the hallway filled with white smoke. It felt like an earthquake," she recalled Tuesday, a hospital identity tag still wrapped around her wrist. "The electricity went out and we didn't know whether to go up or down. I was hysterical."

It was the first lethal rocket attack from Gaza in years, and yet the only fatality was a Palestinian laborer from the West Bank. Two Israeli women were critically wounded.

In just 24 hours, Gaza militants fired more than 450 rockets and mortar shells into southern Israel, the most serious escalation since a 50-day war between Israel and Hamas in 2014. Israel responded with a wave of airstrikes it said targeted militants.

Residents angrily demanded the government restore calm for good, even if that means another war. Yet many people wearily expressed a sense of helplessness, as successive governments fail to come up with an effective policy to bring quiet to the Israel-Gaza frontier.

Hamas militants seized Gaza in 2007, triggering an Israeli-Egyptian border blockade that has choked the territory of 2 million people. Israel refuses to lift the blockade unless Hamas disarms, a demand the militants refuse. The volatile standoff has produced repeated rounds of violence, including indiscriminate Gaza rocket fire at Israeli border towns.

Word late Tuesday that Gaza militants agreed to a cease-fire was unlikely to sway people's minds that there is no long-term solution to the Gaza conundrum.

"I don't know how you stop this thing. Nothing helps. Whatever you do it always comes back," said Shlomit Hayat, 38.

She noted that the deadly violence came just days after Israel allowed Qatar to deliver $15 million in cash to Gaza to alleviate its economic hardship and after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he'd do everything he can to prevent an "unnecessary" war.

The latest fighting was triggered by a botched Israeli raid into Gaza on Sunday that set off clashes resulting in the deaths of seven Palestinian militants, including a local Hamas commander, and a senior Israeli military officer. Palestinian militant groups said the rocket barrage was a message to Israel that such incursions have a cost.

Gazans have similar fears when fighting breaks out. While Israel says it has confined its airstrikes to military targets, hundreds of Palestinian civilians have been killed in the three previous wars. For many in Gaza, the latest outbreak of fighting brought back fears that no place is truly safe in the densely populated territory.

On Tuesday, an Israeli airstrike destroyed a six-story residential building in the Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City that housed a kindergarten on its ground floor. Israel said the building was used by Hamas for military purposes — a charge denied by residents.

"All the people here are civilians, children and families," said Mamdouh al-Shurafa, a building resident. "When we are bombed in the middle of the city, where can we go?"

Israel and Hamas have fought three wars since the group seized Gaza from the internationally-backed Palestinian Authority in 2007. In the most recent war, over 2,200 Palestinians were killed, more than half of them civilians, and tens of thousands were left homeless. Seventy-three people, most of them soldiers, were killed on the Israeli side.

Israel's Iron Dome rocket-defense system and advanced warning networks have provided a large degree of protection from the rockets, which killed some 30 civilians in the decade prior to the 2014 war. Casualties have dropped considerably since then and a proliferation of rocket-proof safe rooms in newer buildings has allowed many Israelis to feel much safer in their own homes.

But this week's onslaught showed the system is not foolproof. The overnight rocket that slipped through penetrated the roof of a four-story apartment building, leaving the entire structure pockmarked, its windows blown out and the balcony shutters hanging limply.

Emergency forces evacuated a critically wounded woman to hospital. Only an hour later, a neighbor sifting through the rubble discovered the other wounded woman and the dead man. "I heard a murmur and then I saw a hand reach out," said Shlomi Lankry.

Relatives in the West Bank town of Halhoul identified the dead man as 48-year-old Mahmoud Abu Asbeh. A married father of six, he would typically sleep in Ashkelon during the week and return home for weekends.

"The rockets don't have eyes to see, they hit randomly, and this happened randomly, it was unintentional," said his father, Abdel Hamid Abu Asbeh. "Last night he told me the rockets are falling like rain. He said: 'May God protect us,' as if he expected something."

Those around the building were at a loss to describe the shock of a rocket landing in the heart of their neighborhood.

"It's like Russian Roulette," said Elie Mozes, 57. "It just comes out of nowhere."

Back at home after her stint in the hospital, Amar said she was at a loss to prescribe a solution. With glass strewn across her bed and holes blown through her hanging laundry, she said all she knew was that something had to be done.

"If anyone still lives in a fairytale that there will be peace here they need to snap out of it," she said.
Hamas has offered Israel a longterm ceasefire including prisoner exchanges, in return for reductions to the Gaza blockade, and infrastructural improvement.