Truce holds in Gaza

Israel said on Monday that a new truce with Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip was holding after going into effect at 00:01 am (2101 UTC).

The Israeli military confirmed that no rockets had been fired from Gaza into Israel since the truce started, adding that Israel had not targeted any locations in the Palestinian enclave either.

Violence between the two sides continued right up to the start of the new truce, with the Qassam Brigades - the armed wing of the Islamist Hamas movement - claiming it had launched a missile toward Tel Aviv shortly before midnight. The rocket launch was confirmed by Israel, but the military said "no fall was identified."

For its part, Israel said it had targeted 11 groups of militants late on Sunday.

The current lull in fighting could allow for the resumption of talks between the two sides in Cairo on a long-term truce to end a month of heavy fighting in Gaza. The violence has killed more than 1,900 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and left 67 dead on the Israeli side, all but three of them soldiers.

The latest outbreak of violence in the region erupted when Israel launched an offensive on July 8 that it said was aimed at stopping rockets being fired from Gaza and at destroying a network of tunnels used by Palestinian militants for cross-border attacks.

Stumbling blocks to peace

A high-ranking Israeli delegation has meanwhile arrived back in Cairo on Monday for indirect talks with Palestinian factions. The delegation had quit the talks after Gaza armed groups resumed their rocket fire at Israel immediately upon the expiry of an earlier 72-hour truce on Friday.

A Palestinian delegation was already in talks with Egyptian mediators, a Palestinian official said.

However, the outcome of peace talks in Egypt remains uncertain, as both sides continue to refuse to budge from their demands.

Hamas, which is in de facto control of the Gaza Strip, has called on Israel to lift an eight-year-long land and sea blockade that the Jewish state says was imposed to prevent weapons being imported into the enclave. The Islamist group also wants fishing zones extended and to have a port and an airport, to boost an economy that is starved of outside resources.

Israel has called for the disarmament of all Gaza militants before it agrees to a longer truce.

In an interview with the AFP news agency, the top United Nations humanitarian official for the Palestinian territories, James Rawley, warned that a new conflict in Gaza was likely unless the blockade were lifted.

"The blockade has to be lifted in order that Gaza can thrive," he said, while warning that Israel's legitimate security concerns must also be addressed.

Rawley also estimated the costs of reconstruction in Gaza following the fighting at $6-8 billion (4.5-6 billion euros), saying that much of Gaza's industry and around half of its agricultural land had been destroyed.

tj/kms (AFP, dpa)