Israel withdraws troops

Talks on longer-term peace deal to start in Cairo as 72-hour truce begins

Israel pulled its ground forces out of the Gaza Strip on Tuesday and started a 72-hour cease-fire with Hamas, mediated by Egypt, as a first step toward negotiations on a more-enduring end to the month-old war.

Minutes before the truce began at 8 am (1 pm China time), Hamas launched a salvo of rockets. Israel's anti-missile system shot down one rocket over Jerusalem, police said. Another hit a house in a town near Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank. There were no casualties.

Israeli armor and infantry withdrew from the Gaza Strip ahead of the truce, with a military spokesman saying their main goal of destroying cross-border infiltration tunnels had been completed.

Troops and tanks will be "redeployed in defensive positions outside the Gaza Strip, and we will maintain those defensive positions", spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Lerner said, reflecting Israeli readiness to resume fighting if attacked.

In Gaza, where about a half-million people have been displaced by a month of bloodshed, some residents, carrying mattresses and with children in tow, left UN shelters to trek back to neighborhoods where whole blocks have been destroyed by Israeli shelling and the smell of decomposing bodies fills the air.

Sitting on a pile of debris on the edge of the northern town of Beit Lahiya, Zuhair Hjaila, a 33-year-old father of four, said he had lost his house and his supermarket.

"This is complete destruction," he said. "I never thought I would come back to find an earthquake zone."

Several previous truce attempts by Egypt and other regional powers, overseen by the United States and United Nations, failed to calm the worst Israeli-Palestinian fighting in two years.

Death toll

Gaza officials say the war has killed 1,867 Palestinians, most of them civilians. Israel says 64 of its soldiers and three civilians have been killed since fighting began on July 8, after a surge in Palestinian rocket launches.

Israel was expected to send delegates to join talks in Cairo to cement a longer-term deal during the course of the truce.

For now, Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz told Israel's Army Radio: "There are no agreements. As we have already said, quiet will be answered with quiet."

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said the Islamist movement had also informed Egypt "of its acceptance of a 72-hour period of calm", beginning on Tuesday.

The US State Department welcomed the truce and urged the parties to "respect it completely". Spokeswoman Jen Psaki added that Washington will continue its efforts to help the sides achieve a "durable, sustainable solution for the long term".

Besides the truce, Palestinians demand an end to the Israeli-Egyptian blockade on impoverished Gaza and the release of prisoners, including those whom Israel arrested in a June crackdown in the occupied West Bank after three Jewish seminary students were kidnapped and killed.

Israel has resisted those demands in the past.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad al-Malki said on Tuesday after meeting prosecutors at the International Criminal Court that there was "clear evidence" that Israel committed war crimes in Gaza.

Both sides have traded allegations of war crimes during the Gaza assault, while defending their own actions as consistent with international law.

"In the last 28 days, there is clear evidence of war crimes committed by Israel amounting to crimes against humanity," Malki told reporters after meetings at the ICC.

(China Daily 08/06/2014 page12)