After 11 days of fighting, a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas took effect at 2 a.m. Friday morning.
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The Diplomatic-Security Cabinet voted unanimously on Thursday to accept the recommendation of security officials, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, Shin Bet security agency head Nadav Argaman, Mossad director Yossi Cohen, and head of the National Security Agency Meir Ben-Shabbat to approve an Egyptian proposal for an unconditional ceasefire.
The Egyptian officials claimed that the ceasefire would be temporary, until longer-term conditions could be agreed upon. The Egyptians expected those terms to be hammered out within three days.
One senior Egyptian official involved in the ceasefire negotiations said that according to the agreement, Israel would immediately stop all strikes against Hamas targets in Gaza starting at 2 a.m. Friday, and that Egypt would take responsibility for securing compliance from Hamas.
Should Hamas continue to fire rockets at Israel, Israel will respond immediately. The ceasefire is designed to allow the Egyptian mediation team the time it needs to work with Hamas on a broader truce deal.
Announcements about the planned ceasefire issued Thursday night were met with another barrage of rockets was fired on Israeli communities near Gaza.
In the hours leading up to the decision, there were reports that Israel had told Egyptian mediators that it was going to stop its strikes on Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip and end Operation Guardian of the Walls, the Arabic-language outlet Al-Jazeera reported on Thursday.
Also on Thursday, top Palestinian diplomat Riad Al-Maliki said said a ceasefire in Gaza would enable 2 million Palestinians to sleep but was "not enough at all" and the world must now tackle the difficult issues of Jerusalem's future and achieving an independent Palestinian state.
Al-Malki told reporters on the sidelines of an emergency meeting of the UN General Assembly on the conflict between Israel and Gaza's Hamas rulers that while a ceasefire was good, it did not address "the core issue" that started the violence – namely, Jerusalem.
The diplomat said the overwhelming messages from the meeting was not only "condemning Israeli atrocities and crimes" in Gaza but reminding the world of the need to care for and defend Jerusalem and to work for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.
"Today's events here in the General Assembly and what has been happening has refocused the attention again on the issue of Palestine," Al-Malki said.
He said Israel's normalization of relations with some Arab countries including the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, did not waive the questions of the future of Jerusalem and a Palestinian state.
"To the contrary, we see today that the issue of Palestine and the Palestinian question, the issue of Jerusalem and the occupation of Jerusalem, is the most important issue for all Muslims and Arabs and the world alike," Al-Malki said.
"We want to see the Palestinian people free and also living in their own independent Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital," he said.
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