A senior Hamas official has told supporters at a rally that the war with Israel will not be over until the group’s demands for a lifting of the Gaza blockade are met.

Israel has resumed its attacks on the Gaza Strip, ending a self-declared, seven-hour ceasefire that was in effect for much of the day.

An Israeli air strike killed a militant leader in the Gaza Strip today, just hours ahead of a seven-hour truce announced by Israel which was meant to open a “humanitarian window” for aid.

At least 35 Palestinians have been killed by shelling in Gaza and the Israeli military says one of its soldiers may have been abducted.

Israel knocked out Gaza’s only power plant and pounded dozens of other high-profile targets yesterday, while Egyptian mediators prepared a revised proposal for halting its war with Islamist guerrillas.

Victoria White’s column (Opinion, July 24) on the Israel/Palestine conflict is flawed in so many ways. Here are two. First, Israel is not a colonial state and was not created as the result of “the mania for ethnic cleansing that started in Russia,” whatever that means.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told US secretary of state John Kerry that Israel will begin a 12-hour pause in Gaza hostilities starting at 7am Israeli time today (5am Irish time), a US official said last night.

US secretary of state John Kerry said he has not yet reached a deal between Israel and Hamas to call a seven-day humanitarian truce in the Gaza war but is continuing work.

Israeli aircraft have struck 30 houses in the Gaza Strip, killing a leader of the militant Islamic Jihad group and two of his sons.

Fighting in Gaza continued to rage yesterday — displacing thousands more Palestinians in the battered territory even as US Secretary of State John Kerry said indirect truce talks between Israel and Hamas had made some progress.

Israeli troops backed by tanks and warplanes have escalated their ground offensive, battling Hamas militants in a crowded neighbourhood of Gaza City.

Israel uncovered more than a dozen cross-border tunnels and engaged in gun battles with Hamas militants today on the second day of its open-ended ground operation in Gaza, as the Palestinian death toll there topped 300.

Israel has widened its air assault against the Gaza Strip’s Hamas rulers, hitting a mosque it said was hiding rockets, as Palestinians said the death toll from the five-day offensive had risen above 125.

Israeli air strikes targeting Hamas in Gaza have hit a mosque as the Palestinian death toll topped 120 in an offensive that shows no signs of slowing down.

Rockets fired from Lebanon have struck Israel as long-range missile fire from Gaza continued against the country for a fourth day.

Israel dramatically escalated its aerial assault targeting hundreds of Hamas sites in the Gaza Strip yesterday.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said it is more urgent than ever to avoid another Israeli-Palestinian war that could spill into the Middle East and called on both sides to agree a ceasefire.

The Israeli army has intensified its offensive on the Gaza Strip, striking Hamas sites and killing at least 14 people on the second day of a military operation.

Israeli soldiers have clashed with Palestinians during an arrest raid in the search for three missing teenagers believed to have been abducted in the West Bank, the military said.

Israeli troops arrested some 80 Palestinians, including dozens of members of Hamas, in an overnight raid in the West Bank as the prime minister accused the Islamic militant group of kidnapping three teenagers who went missing last week.

THE longstanding Irish policy of neutrality, an ongoing balancing act of several competing pressures — nationalism, the post-colonial relation with Britain, a burgeoning involvement with European politics — came under particular scrutiny in 1983.

Two of Egypt’s former militant groups are offering an initiative to halt the country’s political violence, in which supporters of the ousted Islamist president will stop street protests if the military-backed government stops its crackdown on them.

Boston Marathon suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev downloaded bomb-making instructions from an al-Qaida magazine, legal documents revealed.

An arrest raid by undercover Israeli soldiers disguised as vegetable sellers sparked rare clashes in the northern West Bank, leaving at 10 Palestinians wounded.

Clashes erupted in the northern West Bank today after Israeli soldiers disguised themselves as vegetable sellers to seize members of a militant group, Palestinians said.

Israel bombed dozens of targets in Gaza and said that while it was prepared to step up its offensive by sending in troops, it preferred a diplomatic solution that would end rocket fire from the Palestinian enclave.

Israel and Hamas continued to bombard each other today as attempts began to broker a cease-fire after six days of death and destruction.

An Israeli missile killed at least 11 Palestinian civilians including four children in Gaza, medical officials said, apparently an attack on a top militant that brought a three-storey home crashing down.

An Israeli missile flattened a two-story house in a residential neighbourhood of Gaza City today, killing at least 11 civilians, medical officials said.

Abu Hafs al Mauritani, who was a senior adviser to al Qaida, was released from a prison in Mauritania over the weekend, his family confirmed.

An Israeli soldier and a Palestinian militant have died in a shootout near the border with the Gaza Strip.

Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel launched a hunger strike today demanding an end to open-ended detentions without trial

Egypt has brokered a ceasefire between Palestinian militant factions and Israel after four days of violence, an Egyptian security official said today.

Israeli airstrikes killed two militants and a schoolboy in the Gaza Strip today as Palestinian rocket squads continued to bombard Israel, in escalating fighting that has defied international truce efforts.

Three Palestinians were killed in fresh Israeli air raids in Gaza yesterday, raising the death toll to 18, as militants fired more rockets into the Jewish state.

A Palestinian prisoner has agreed to end his 66-day hunger strike in protest over his imprisonment without charge after reaching a deal with Israel that will free him in April.

A Palestinian prisoner has agreed to end his 66-day hunger strike in protest over his imprisonment without charge after reaching a deal with Israel that will free him in April.

An Israeli missile strike has reportedly killed two suspected Islamic militants in Gaza.

An Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip has killed an Islamic Jihad militant and wounded three others as they were preparing to fire rockets into southern Israel.

VIOLENCE between Israel and Gaza militants flared anew yesterday after Egypt said it had brokered a truce to end attacks that have killed 10 Palestinian gunmen and an Israeli civilian in the past five days.

A Gaza Strip militant group spearheading a recent campaign of rocket barrages into Israel said today it was prepared to cease fire if the Israeli military did so as well.

Five men have been killed in an explosion at a militant training camp in the southern Gaza Strip, a Palestinian medical official said.

The Israeli military has sent two more warships to the Red Sea border with Egypt following warnings that militants are planning another attack on southern Israel from Egyptian soil, officials said.

A Gaza militant leader said today that Islamic Jihad will be watching Israel’s response to the latest attempt at a ceasefire.