Officials in Israel and Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip said on Saturday evening that they had reached an agreement to end the worst round of cross-border fighting since 2021.
Muhammad al-Hindi, a senior leader in the Islamic Jihad leadership, told Al-Qahera and Al-Nas TV that the deal, which was reached with the mediation of Egyptian officials, will enter into force at 22.00 local time on Saturday, which raises the possibility that the five days will end. ignition.
But in the minutes after the deadline, sirens sounded of incoming missiles in areas around the Gaza Strip, and Israel later said its planes struck two rocket launchers hidden in Gaza, leaving the durability of the deal in question.
Tzachi Hanegbi, the head of Israel’s National Security Council, said that Israel’s acceptance of the truce meant that “quiet will be met with calm,” and that if Israel is attacked or threatened, “it will continue to do whatever it needs to do in order to defend itself.”
Egyptian officials have been trying to negotiate a cease-fire since Wednesday, but previous rounds of talks stalled after Israel rejected Islamic Jihad’s demand that it halt targeted killings of its leadership.
The cross-border exchange was the fiercest since Israel and Hamas, the largest armed group that controls Gaza, fought an 11-day war in 2021. On Saturday, the Israeli military said it had bombed 371 sites in the besieged area since the standoff began. Meanwhile, militants fired 1,234 rockets and mortar shells at Israel.
The fighting comes a year after tensions escalated between Israelis and Palestinians, as Israeli forces launched near-night raids in the occupied West Bank following attacks by Palestinians on Israelis, while Israel and militants in Gaza periodically exchanged rocket fire.
The latest round of violence erupted on Tuesday when Israel killed 15 people, including eight women and children, in air strikes targeting three high-ranking members of the Islamic Jihad group it said had been involved in rocket fire from the Strip a week earlier.
In the days that followed, a total of 33 people, including 9 women and children, were killed in the Gaza Strip, according to the local health ministry, and 147 people were injured. Israel said it had killed at least six senior Islamic Jihad officials.
In Israel, two people were killed by rocket fire, including a Palestinian with a work permit in Israel, and a woman who died when a rocket hit a residential building in the city of Rehovot. Israeli medics said five other people were wounded in the attack on Rehovot.
The rocket volleys forced people across southern Israel into bomb shelters, as well as sounding sirens in the malls of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, which were targeted by activists in a rare move on Friday.
The fighting has also exacerbated the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza, a 365-square-kilometre enclave home to more than two million Palestinians whose economy has been devastated by a 16-year blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt.
The UN agency for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (OCHA) warned on Friday that 417 people in the Strip have been internally displaced during the fighting, mainly due to the destruction of their homes.
The power outages that plague the enclave have also worsened, she added, reducing the electricity supply to less than 12 hours a day in many parts of Gaza.