Hamas says it has reached a Gaza cease-fire deal with Israel
The agreement, brokered by Egypt, could bring a halt to the cycle of Palestinian rocket attacks into Israel and Israeli airstrikes in Gaza.
JERUSALEM - The Islamic group Hamas said today it had reached agreement with Israel on a cease-fire that would end more than a year of stepped-up Palestinian rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip and punishing Israeli retaliation.
The announcement came shortly after state-run media in Egypt, whose government has been trying to broker an accord, said a cease-fire would go into effect Thursday.
Israeli officials declined to confirm or deny a deal but said a de facto truce would take hold as soon as the Palestinian attacks end.
Both sides have been seeking a cease-fire for months, even as fighting ebbed and flowed across the Israel-Gaza border. Israeli aircraft today attacked targets in southern Gaza, killing at least six militants, Palestinian medical officials said.
Hamas officials said they would not let the latest violence derail the truce.
Indirect talks between the two sides began after a spate of cross-border attacks in late February and early March left several Israelis and more than 120 Palestinians dead. Egypt's intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, has been meeting separately with Israeli and Hamas officials.
Israel has been seeking a halt to rocket attacks launched from Gaza nearly every day, an end to Hamas' buildup of weapons smuggled through border tunnels from Egypt, and the release of an Israeli soldier held by Hamas for two years. The attacks from Gaza have intensified since Hamas seized full control of the coastal enclave last June, driving out forces of the more secular Fatah movement.
Hamas, in turn, wants an end to Israel's frequent military incursions into Gaza and the lifting of an Israeli blockade that has isolated the impoverished territory.
The state-run Egyptian news agency MENA cited an unidentified Egyptian official as saying the two sides had agreed on a "mutual and simultaneous calm" in Gaza starting at 6 a.m. Thursday.
An Egyptian official told the Associated Press that if the area is quiet for three days, Israel would begin to open Gaza's border crossings to let more humanitarian supplies into the territory. A week later, Israel would allow in additional goods.
In a final phase of the accord, Israel would consider agreeing to a reopening of Gaza's border crossing with Egypt. That crossing, at Rafah, is the main exit route for Gaza's 1.5 million people. Israel and Egypt agreed to close the crossing in June 2007.
