JERUSALEM — A reported truce mediated by Egypt on Tuesday appeared to bring a shaky calm to the most intense cross-border fighting in three years between Israel and militants based in Gaza Strip.
The cease-fire, which Egyptian state media said took effect hours before dawn on Tuesday, is intended to halt a four-day cycle of more than 300 militant-fired rockets into southern Israel and dozens of Israeli airstrikes on Gaza.
Though both sides have warned that the conflict could expand, neither has seemed inclined to escalate to all-out war.
Even with the truce reportedly in effect, however, the Israeli military said a mortar landed near the southern Israeli city of Eshkol Tuesday morning, and six rockets launched from Gaza had hit southern Israel by midday. No one was injured. The tally represented a significant drop in rocket strikes over previous days.
Schools in the region remained closed, Israeli authorities said. But the Israeli military had halted airstrikes. Cabinet minister Matan Vilnai told Israel Radio the violence “appears to be behind us.”
The clashes began Friday, after an Israeli airstrike killed the top commander of a militant faction that the Israeli military said was plotting an attack on southern Israel via Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. Militants in the coastal strip responded with a barrage of rocket fire, which Israel sought to quash with multiple airstrikes on what it said were rocket-launching squads and weapons factories.
Twenty-four Palestinians were killed in the fighting. Medics in Gaza said the vast majority were militants.
Egypt, which has a longstanding peace agreement with Israel and friendly relations with Hamas, the Islamist militants who rule Gaza, has mediated truces between Israel and Palestinian fighters in the past. Egyptian officials told wire services that both sides had agreed to end the attacks, and added that Israel had given an unusual pledge to “stop assassinations.”
But Israeli officials brushed away that assertion. “Whoever initiates terror should know he will always be in our sights as soon as possible,” said Vilnai, the cabinet minister.
Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, Israel’s military chief, told reporters that, “Calm will be reciprocated with calm, and fire will be reciprocated with fire.”
Officially, Hamas stayed on the sidelines, and most of the rocket firing was carried out by a rival militant faction, Islamic Jihad. But Hamas did little to stop the violence.
The conflict gave Israel, which is mulling a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, the opportunity to demonstrate its year-old Iron Dome antimissile defense system. Currently deployed only in Israel’s south, the system intercepted dozens of rockets that targeted popular centers. It had a 90 percent success rate, the Israeli military said.
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