Israel Hamas conflict: After 29 days, peace returns to Gaza

Gaza City: Israel withdrew ground forces from the Gaza Strip on Tuesday and started a 72-hour ceasefire with Hamas mediated by Egypt as a first step towards negotiations on a more enduring end to the month-old war.

Minutes before the truce began at 8 am (0500 GMT), Hamas launched a salvo of rockets, calling them revenge for Israel’s “massacres”.

Israel’s anti-missile system shot down one rocket over Jerusalem, the police said. Another hit a house in a town near Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank. There were no casualties.

Israeli armour and infantry left Gaza ahead of the truce, with a military spokesman saying their main goal of destroying cross-border infiltration tunnels dug by Islamist militants had been completed.

“Mission accomplished,” the military tweeted.

Troops and tanks will be “redeployed in defensive positions outside the Gaza Strip and we will maintain those defensive positions”, a spokesman said, reflecting Israeli readiness to resume fighting if attacked. Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for the Islamist Hamas faction that rules Gaza, said Israel’s offensive in the densely populated, coastal enclave was a “100 per cent failure”.

Israel sent officials to join talks in Cairo to cement a longer-term deal during the course of the truce. Hamas and Islamic Jihad also dispatched representatives from Gaza. A month of fighting between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip will cost the Palestinian territory at least $4-6 billion in damages, deputy economy minister Taysir Amro said Tuesday.

Mr Amro told AFP the figure included only “direct damages” to the Gaza economy and warned it could climb further once additional impacts on the 1.8 million population are taken into account.

Palestinian foreign minister Riad al-Malki said after meeting prosecutors at the International Criminal Court that there was “clear evidence” that Israel committed war crimes in Gaza.