Palestinian protests on the Gaza-Israel border have dropped off over the past two days, amid reports that Egyptian officials intervened to restore calm after dozens of Palestinians were killed by IDF fire.
A Hamas official in Gaza told a Palestinian television channel that 50 of the 60 protesters killed Monday and Tuesday were Hamas operatives.
Hamas denied that it was under pressure from neighboring Egypt to scale back the six-week-old demonstrations, and said they would continue, although fewer Palestinians were now gathering in protest tents.
Israel has accused Hamas of using civilians as cover for attacks across the frontier fence and to distract from Gaza's internal problems. Hamas denies this.
The reports of Egyptian pressure on Hamas, the armed Islamist faction that controls the Gaza Strip, followed a visit by Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Sunday to Egypt, which has sought to act as a broker between Hamas, Israel and other Palestinian factions.
Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz said that an Egyptian intelligence chief, whom he did not name, "made unequivocally clear" to Haniyeh that Egypt would not help if Hamas continued to stoke the protests, and Israel responded with harsher measures.
"Haniyeh returned to Gaza, Hamas gave an order ... and miraculously, this spontaneous protest by a public that could not handle the situation any more dissipated," Katz told Israel Radio.
There was no immediate response from Egypt to Katz's statements, and Hamas dismissed the Israeli claims as false.
Hamas leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar denied that Egypt put pressure on Hamas to end the protests and said that instead, Haniyeh discussed what Cairo could do to ease hardship in Gaza.
"They were keen these marches do not slide into armed confrontations and we agree with the brothers in Egypt over that," Sinwar said in an interview on Al Jazeera television.
The start of the holy month of Ramadan on Thursday could limit the scale of demonstrations. The factions said the dawn-to-dusk fasting would be taken into account but marches would continue through early June.
