Israel and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group agreed to a Cairo-mediated truce to take effect late on Sunday, both sides said, raising hopes of an end to the most serious flare-up on the Gaza frontier in more than a year.
Since Friday, Israeli forces pounded Palestinian targets through the weekend, triggering longer-range rocket attacks against its cities.
The truce would come into effect at 11:30pm local time, Islamic Jihad and the Israeli Government said in separate statements.
The latest clashes have echoed preludes to previous Gaza wars, though they have been relatively contained as Hamas, the governing Islamist group in the Gaza Strip and a more powerful force than Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad, has so far stayed out.
Gaza officials said 43 Palestinians, almost half of them civilians and including children, had so far been killed. The rockets have threatened much of southern Israel and sent residents in cities including Tel Aviv and Ashkelon to shelters.
Israel launched what it called pre-emptive strikes on Friday against what it anticipated would be an Islamic Jihad attack meant to avenge the arrest of a leader of the group, Bassam al-Saadi, in the occupied West Bank.
In response, Islamic Jihad fired hundreds of rockets at Israel. The group said the truce would involve al-Saadi’s release. Israeli officials did not immediately comment.
Read the article by Nidal Al-Mughrabi and Maayan Lubell in Sight Magazine.