Israel, Palestinians and Hamas to meet for talks

Egypt's UN Ambassador tonight said representatives of Israel, the Palestinians and Hamas have agreed to meet tomorrow for talks brokered by Egypt.

Representatives of Israel, the Palestinians and Hamas have agreed to meet tomorrow for talks brokered by Egypt in Cairo, it was reported tonight.

Egypt’s UN Ambassador Maged Abdelaziz said “everybody has agreed to send a technical delegation” for talks on the Egyptian-French truce proposal, the terms of which still remain unclear.

The plan calls for an immediate ceasefire in the Israeli-Hamas conflict for a limited period to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said Israel and the moderate Palestinian Authority – Hamas’s rival – accepted the plan though it is not a direct party to the conflict.

Meanwhile Israeli warplanes continued to bomb the Gaza-Egypt border as top officials decided to press ahead with a bloody offensive.

Hamas, for its part, kept up its rocket fire on southern Israel.

With the diplomatic channel activated, it looked as if the sides were scrambling to get in as many hits as possible before any truce materialised.

Israeli strikes killed 29 Palestinians today, bringing the Palestinian death toll during 12 days of devastating air and ground assaults to 688 and driving home the difficult road ahead for those around the world seeking a diplomatic endgame for Israel’s Gaza invasion.

“I feel like the ground is shaking when we hear the shelling. People are terrified,” said Fida Kishta, a resident of the Gaza-Egypt border area where Israeli planes destroyed 16 empty houses presumably suspected of shielding entrances to tunnels used to smuggle arms to Hamas.

Despite the heavy fighting and the wide gulf between Israel and Hamas on the terms of any cease-fire, today’s events appeared to put the truce option squarely on the global agenda, even though it would likely take days or weeks before details are worked out.

Israeli officials said they viewed the French-Egyptian proposal positively and announced they would send an envoy to Cairo tomorrow to hear more about it.

In Turkey, a diplomat said that country would be asked to put together an international force that could presumably help keep the peace.

And diplomats in New York worked on a UN Security Council statement backing the initiative, which calls for an immediate end to the violence followed by a period of negotiation.

The military, meanwhile, allowed two TV teams to accompany soldiers on patrol for the first time. The footage showed soldiers walking through a deserted street in an unidentified location in Gaza.

The Israeli military correspondent who accompanied the soldiers said they were concerned about Hamas booby-traps. He said they were shooting through walls, throwing grenades around corners, going from house to house looking for Hamas gunmen and using bomb sniffer dogs.

At some point, soldiers took up position in an abandoned Palestinian home, napping on mattresses.

Hamas fired rockets, though at a slower pace than previous days, hitting the towns of Ashkelon and Beersheba with the sort of longer range missiles never seen before this war. Rockets were still hitting the cities after midnight, but no one was hurt.

Israel suspended its offensive from 1pm to 4pm to allow humanitarian supplies to reach Gaza, and Israeli officials said such lulls would be declared on a regular basis. Fighting resumed minutes after the lull lapsed.

During the lull, Israel allowed in 80 trucks of supplies as well as industrial fuel for Gaza’s power plant. Medics tried to retrieve bodies in areas that had previously been too dangerous to approach. The Palestinian Red Crescent said in a statement that one of its ambulance drivers was shot by Israeli soldiers during the lull. The Israeli military said it had no knowledge of the incident.

Medic Mohammed Azayzeh in central Gaza pulled out three people, killed by shrapnel fire on Sunday in the border town of Mughraqa, where Israeli tanks had settled nearby. The medic said he also found a dead family of three, including a father cradling a one-year-old boy.

The wail of ambulance sirens could be heard as drivers rushed to the border crossing with Egypt to evacuate the wounded during the relative drop in violence.

In the Jebaliya refugee camp, residents held a mass funeral for 40 people killed a day before by Israeli mortar fire toward a UN school. Israel says Hamas militants fired mortar shells from an area near the school, and that Israeli responded to this attack.

Israel released footage of suspected Hamas militants captured by Israeli troops. The men were blindfolded and their hands were bound with plastic cuffs.

Several were cuffed together, and led away by soldiers. Others were seen kneeling on the sandy ground.