The Israeli government announced Thursday evening that he accepted a ceasefire proposal to suspend the fighting against Hamas, the radical Palestinian group that actually governs the Gaza Strip. The proposal, already accepted by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, another Palestinian armed group in the Strip, was mediated by Egypt in the last few hours and will enter into force at two local time in the night between Thursday and Friday (1 am Italian time). The office of the Israeli prime minister, the conservative Benjamin Netanyahu, specified that it had accepted the ceasefire “without any preconditions”.
War between Israel and Palestinian armed groups in the Gaza Strip it started 11 days ago and had resulted in the killing of 232 Palestinians and 12 Israelis.
The ceasefire agreement may be partly the result of international pressure in recent days and the effectiveness of Egyptian mediation, but it seems mostly motivated by the achievement of the goals that the Israeli government had set itself before the war: in particular the significant reduction of Hamas’ military arsenal, including the destruction of military installations where rockets to be launched against Israel were built or assembled; and damage to the underground tunnel network used by the armed groups of the Strip to import both goods of various kinds, circumventing the very harsh embargo imposed by Israel, and military material, especially from Syria and Iran.
– Read also: The tunnels under the Gaza Strip
The details of the agreement are not yet clear, beyond the suspension of the fighting starting at 2 am between Thursday and Friday. On Thursday evening a Hamas leader told Al Mayadeen, a network affiliated with the radical Lebanese group Hezbollah, that Hamas would receive “guarantees that the Israeli attacks on the al Aqsa mosque and Sheikh Jarrah would be stopped”.
The reference is to the two events that had triggered the war: namely the intervention of the Israeli police in the complex of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, on the same day as the bombing began, and the eviction of some Palestinian families in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood East Jerusalem, which had caused a notable increase in tension between Israelis and Palestinians. Journalist Barak Ravid, citing his Israeli source, he wrote however, that no Israeli commitment to the al Aqsa mosque and the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood would be included in the agreement, effectively disproving the Hamas version.
– Read also: The places of the crisis between Israel and the Gaza Strip
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