July 20, 2014: Israeli U.N. Ambassador Ron Prosor speaks during an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council on the worsening situation in Gaza at United Nations headquarters. (Photo: AP Photo/John Minchillo)
After debating whether to pull out of the Gaza Strip without a deal, Israel accepted a 72-hour cease-fire with Hamas that is set to begin Tuesday.
A senior Israeli official said the cease-fire will begin at 8 a.m. local time (1 a.m. ET) and Fox News reported a Palestinian delegation in Cairo confirmed it has accepted the truce.
An Israeli delegation will travel to Egypt with the hope to hatch out a long-term truce in the next three days, though Hamas previously said it would not consider ending the rocket fire even in such a case.
Israeli officials, however, remain skeptical that Hamas is sincere, since the terror group has violated multiple previous cease-fire agreements over the duration of the conflict.
Over the weekend, Israel began scaling back its ground operation while still conducting heavy aerial, offshore and artillery bombardments of terror sites in the Gaza strip. The latest conflict in Gaza, which began after three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped by Hamas and found in a shallow grave in the West Bank, entered its fourth week. The conflict has left more than 1,800 Palestinians and 60 Israelis dead. However, it is unclear how many of the Palestinian dead are civilians.
On Monday, an Israeli soldier in a tunnel in Jerusalem’s Mount Scopus was shot and seriously wounded by a gunman on a motorcycle before the end of a previously negotiated seven-hour humanitarian cease-fire. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said law enforcement officials are currently searching for the shooter in east Jerusalem.
“Multiple shots were fired, one man was hit in the stomach and rushed to the hospital in serious condition,” he told the Jerusalem Post.
Prior to the attack on the soldier, the temporary quiet in the Gaza Strip was shattered by an attack in Jerusalem, during which a man slammed the front end of a construction excavator into an Israeli bus.
Police described the incident as a “terrorist attack,” indicating Hamas was responsible.
