’Israel’ Agrees to Five Hour ’Humanitarian Ceasefire’ After Inhumane Hostilities Against Seized Gaza

Local Editor

"Israel" has agreed to a five hour "humanitarian ceasefire" to briefly halt hostilities on seized Gaza on Thursday, following the recent "Israeli" shelling attack that massacred four Palestinian children as they were playing soccer on a Gaza beach on Wednesday.

The "Israeli" army announced it would halt its bombardment of seized Gaza between 10:00 am and 3:00 pm [0700 to 1200 GMT] on Thursday.

Hamas later followed suit.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zukhri said: "The Palestinian factions agreed to accept the offer from the United Nations for a cooling-down on the ground for five hours starting from 10 in the morning."

The two sides agreed to halt attacks to allow Gazans to get food and other supplies.

Ahead of the five-hour pause, hostilities continued with "Israel's" air strikes early on Thursday, on the 10th day of its campaign, taking the toll to 227 martyred and 1,678 wounded, Gaza medical services said.

More than 80 percent of them were civilians, a Gaza-based human rights group says.
The Zionist army said early on Thursday that "Israel" had conducted 37 raids overnight on seized Gaza.

Hamas had rejected initial Egyptian efforts for a full ceasefire, saying it had not been included in the discussions.

In Cairo, a Hamas official met Egyptian leaders and Palestinian Authority president Mahmud Abbas arrived to join the diplomatic efforts.

"Israeli" news website NRG said that ""Israeli" representatives" would also join the Cairo deliberations.

Meanwhile, Zionist Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman acknowledged on Wednesday the latest missile power and capabilities of Hamas, urging the government not to rush toward a ceasefire with the Palestinian resistance group, but instead to send ground troops into the area in seized Gaza.

He said that history has shown that Hamas uses such ceasefires only to rearm- with ever-improving weaponry.

"During the first [Gaza] operation, Cast Lead, they only had short-range missiles; only Sderot was under rocket fire. During the second operation, Pillar of "Defense," missiles reached Rishon Letzion, and they had over 18 [long-range] rockets. Today, they reach Zichron Ya'akov and Hadera, and have more than 300 long-range missiles."

"We shouldn't think about what will be in 10 years, but how we can prevent them from producing and developing their "terror" infrastructure," he said. "If there is no way to prevent them from developing this infrastructure, if they will use these 10 years to build more and more missiles and drones, what will we have gained?"

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team