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The ceasefire agreement didn’t give Hamas everything it wanted, but it gave Israel nothing at all.Israel’s insistence on demilitarizing Gaza fell by the wayside.Why? Here’s one answer. Nabil Shaath, a senior PLO official and confidante of PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas, said that Israel dropped the demand that Hamas be demilitarized, due to American pressure, in an interview with the Arabic Ma’an News Agency. As usual the war was won on the battlefield and lost at the negotiating table. Which means it will have to be repeated in a year or two with a stronger Hamas.Without demilitarizing Gaza, the entire...

Ministers from Jewish Home, Yisrael Beytenu and even Likud opposed truce - but PM circumvented cabinet vote on a legal technicality. Roughly half the cabinet was opposed to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's decision to agree to an open-ended ceasefire with Hamas - but the decision was passed unilaterally by the PM anyway.

The United Nations Security Council on Wednesday urged Israel and the Palestinian Arabs to return to the negotiating table to quickly agree on a lasting truce in Gaza. In a unanimously adopted statement quoted by AFP, the 15-member council "offered full support to the Egyptian initiative and called upon the parties to resume negotiations to urgently reach a sustainable and lasting ceasefire." The statement drafted by France was agreed after negotiations in Cairo teetered on the verge of collapse amid a fresh flare-up of violence. The measure fell short of a full resolution, but diplomats signaled they would be ready...

The Gaza cease-fire is now due to end at midnight on Tuesday, after Israel and Hamas agreed to extend it by 24-hours to allow additional time to come to an understanding to stop the violence.

The American government has been asked by the international community to directly intervene in any truce agreement between Israel and Hamas, according to a report in Arabic daily Al-Hayat, and force Israel to agree to Hamas's demands in future ceasefire agreements. Egypt was reportedly behind the guarantee, as rumors swirl that the current conditions being discussed have found support both from the international community at large and from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. Israel has denied agreeing to any truce deal proposed so far, however, and diplomatic sources in Jerusalem have emphasized repeatedly that Israel will not agree to any...

JERUSALEM - Hamas reportedly rejected a comprehensive, 11-clause long term ceasefire proposal on Saturday. Egypt has warned that this proposal will be its final effort to secure a lasting end to the Israel-Gaza conflict. According to details leaked by Egyptian newspaper al-Shorouk, the 11-clause proposal contained several key concessions to the Palestinian delegation, including the opening of border crossings between Israel and Gaza, the elimination of the so-called "buffer zones" along the Israel-Gaza border, the extension of the fishing zone to 12 miles off the Gazan coast, and the assistance of Israel and the Palestinian Authority in rebuilding the infrastructure...

Gaza terrorists fired a barrage of rockets towards southern Israel on Wednesday night, just moments before one ceasefire was set to end and a new one to begin. The Iron Dome anti-missile system intercepted one rocket over the city of Netivot. Two other rockets exploded in the Sdot Negev region. […] The latest rocket fire came just before midnight, when a 72-hour ceasefire was set to end. Moments before midnight, Israel and the Palestinian Arabs agreed to extend the 72-hour ceasefire. …

Even as Israeli representatives are in Cairo to discuss a truce with Hamas on Tuesday, the terrorist group is taking pains to clarify it has no intentions of desisting from trying to wipe Israel off the map. Hamas's "military wing," the Al-Qassam Brigades, released a statement presenting its position on the ongoing talks in Egypt. "The warriors in Gaza are waiting with Allah's help to renew the fighting, or to return to planning the next campaign. There's no escape. Either jihad or planning (for the next jihad)," declared the statement. The remarks leave no doubts that even in the case...

Criticism of the government’s handling of the Gaza war is reaching fever pitch. No one seems to understand what direction Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is pulling them in vis-a-vis Hamas. And everyone is getting the feeling that the terrorists increasingly determine the flow of life in Israel. Hundreds of families from the villages in the vicinity of Gaza protested what they said is the government’s failure to provide security in Israel’s southern regions. The sentiment, which is shared by Israelis across the country, is that the army pulled out of Gaza too early. A number of cabinet ministers agree. Foreign...

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri on Friday laid the blame on Israel for the ceasefire in Gaza not being extended, saying the Jewish state did not provide a clear response to Hamas’s conditions. Speaking at a news conference in Gaza City and quoted by the Ma’an news agency, Abu Zuhri said that the lack of response undermined Palestinian demands and that “Israeli stubbornness led to not extending the ceasefire.” He accused Israel of stalling and wasting time, adding that it must accept all of Hamas’s conditions. He said that Israel rejected the establishment of an airport or a seaport and...

A spokesman for Hamas’s “military wing”, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, warned Thursday of renewed fighting with Israel if talks in Cairo to extend a 72-truce in Gaza collapsed. “We appeal to the Palestinian delegation to not accept a ceasefire, unless it satisfies the demands of our people,” a spokesman using the nom-de-guerre Abu Obeida said in a televised address, adding that Hamas fighters were “ready to return to battle.” …

A spokesman for Hamas's "military wing", the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, warned Thursday of renewed fighting with Israel if talks in Cairo to extend a 72-truce in Gaza collapsed. "We appeal to the Palestinian delegation to not accept a ceasefire, unless it satisfies the demands of our people," a spokesman using the nom-de-guerre Abu Obeida said in a televised address, adding that Hamas fighters were "ready to return to battle." The three-day truce ending four weeks of bloodshed between Israel and Hamas is due to end at 0500 GMT Friday. .....

Hamas staged a "victory rally" on Thursday in Gaza, as the future of a three-day ceasefire remains uncertain. Hundreds of Palestinians poured onto the streets of Gaza City, chanting support for "resistance" against Israel, an AFP reporter said. Loudspeakers mounted by the roadside blared out Hamas victory songs as the crowd - most of them men but with some children dressed in combat fatigues and carrying toy guns - gathered in the square outside the parliament building. A huge Palestinian flag hung behind a podium where speakers whipped up the crowd with chants of victory on the eve of the...

Hours before the 72-hour ceasefire was due to expire Friday morning, Aug. 8, the Palestinian Hamas’ military wing slapped down an ultimatum before Israel: Either allow the Gaza Strip to have an open seaport – which would be tantamount to lifting the Gaza blockade - or prepare for a long and brutal war of attrition with thousands of fatalities. Hamas’ decision about extending the ceasefire was tensely awaited Thursday night after Israel’s acceptance. Instead, the Palestinian Islamists declared that the war would go on unless Israel bowed to their dictates. Israel’s envoys had previously rejected their demand for a deep...

Israel has offered to extend a three-day ceasefire in Gaza which began on Tuesday after nearly a month of conflict, Israeli officials say. However, unconfirmed reports on social media suggest the militant Hamas movement, which controls Gaza, has not agreed to the extension. Egypt has been mediating in indirect Israeli-Palestinian talks. More than 1,800 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and 67 Israelis, mainly soldiers, have died in the conflict. A Thai national in Israel was also killed. A senior Israeli official told the BBC Israel had expressed its readiness to extend the truce under its current terms beyond its expiry on Friday....

Hamas deputy leader Moussa Abu Marzouk said on Wednesday there has been no agreement to extend a 72-hour ceasefire with Israel that is set to expire on Friday, according to AFP. "There is no agreement to extend the ceasefire," wrote Abu Marzouk on Twitter. He is part of a Palestinian Authority delegation holding indirect talks with Israel in Cairo, the report noted. Israel indicated on Wednesday it was prepared to extend the ceasefire as Egyptian mediators pushed for a durable truce, but Hamas was quick to reject that notion, with a spokesman saying that the sides would "resume fighting immediately...

Mideast: Finally, the president has scolded Hamas for using its tunnels to attack Israel. But he should also fault his former secretary of state. It was Hillary Clinton who aided their construction. Rewind to 2012. Then, as now, Hamas terrorists in Gaza were raining rockets on Israeli towns. Eight days of cross-border fighting claimed 166 Palestinian and six Israeli lives. Just 48 hours before Israeli troops planned to invade Gaza, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton brokered a cease-fire. She flew to the region and met with Israeli and Palestinian leaders and announced a peace deal from Cairo. The cease-fire held,...

As it winds towards a 72-hour truce brokered by Egypt, the latest round of conflict between Israel and Hamas has--finally--resorted to the pattern with which the international media are familiar: Palestinian terrorists attack Israel, Israel defends itself for a bit, a civilian target is hit, and Israel is forced to stop. Usually the media neglect to mention that Hamas hides weapons in, or initiates battles from, those same civilian sites, on purpose.

Israel confirmed on Monday night that it has agreed to Egypt’s proposal for a 72-hour ceasefire in Gaza, to begin Tuesday morning at 8:00 a.m. local time. The confirmation came after the ministers in the Security-Diplomacy Cabinet held a telephone discussion during which they voted to agree to the ceasefire. According to Channel 10 News, the ministers also decided that an Israeli delegation, headed by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s envoy Yitzhak Molho, would make its way to Cairo for talks on a permanent ceasefire. Earlier Monday, a senior Egyptian official said that both sides had agreed to the ceasefire. "Egypt's...

Following the quick collapse of the cease-fire in Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the White House not to force a truce with Palestinian militants on Israel. The strong reaction came as top Israeli officials questioned the effort to forge the truce, accusing the U.S. and the United Nations of being naive in assuming the radical Hamas movement would adhere with its terms. The officials also blamed the Gulf state of Qatar for not forcing the militants to comply.