That approach failed to prevent the recent days of fighting, which was yet another conflagration involving Gaza, which has experienced at least six major bursts of violence since Hamas seized control there in 2007.
The eruption of violence also has driven a wedge between Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas, the largest militia in Gaza, which opted to remain on the sidelines of the conflict.Īnd it has highlighted both the limits and strengths of Israel’s strategy of offering small economic concessions to ordinary Gazans - notably 14,000 work permits that help boost the Palestinian economy.
Two of its key leaders are now dead and many of its bases and weapons factories have been destroyed. The fighting has badly damaged Islamic Jihad, Gaza’s second-largest militia. Scores of Israelis were lightly injured while running for cover from Palestinian rockets, and an unexploded rocket fell in a residential area of the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, officials and medics said. Some 311 people were injured, the health ministry there said. If the truce holds, the fighting will end with a death toll of at least 44 in Gaza, including 15 children, according to the health ministry there.
Israeli officials declined to reveal further details about the agreement, but Islamic Jihad said it had received assurances from Egyptian officials who mediated the negotiations that Egypt would lobby Israel to release two leading members of the group currently detained in Israeli jails, Bassem Saadi and Khalil Awawdeh. Eastern, but did not appear to have immediately been observed by either side, as rocket fire and airstrikes continued until in the minutes after the deadline. The cease-fire officially took effect at 11:30 p.m. A 15-year blockade of Gaza remains in place, and there is no prospect of peace talks to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The conflict, which began on Friday afternoon, when Israel launched airstrikes to foil what it said was an imminent attack from Gaza, has left the status quo in Israel and the occupied territories almost unchanged. Israel and Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants in Gaza agreed to a cease-fire, the two parties announced late Sunday night, a move that was expected to end a three-day conflict that killed dozens of Palestinians, including children as well as key militant commanders destroyed several residential buildings and militant bases in Gaza and paralyzed parts of southern Israel. Palestinians searched through rubble on Sunday in Rafah, in southern Gaza, where Khaled Mansour, a top Islamic Jihad militant, was killed in an Israeli airstrike Saturday night.
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