Israel approved a ceasefire on Thursday after days of prolonged conflict with Hamas amid U.S. pressure to end the fighting.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu‘s Security Cabinet approved the measure following 11 days of violence, according to local media reports. The agreement is set to take effect at 2 a.m. local time, hours after the deliberations took place.
Sirens were sounding in southern Israel minutes after the announcement, the Israel Defense Forces said in a tweet.
LIBERALS CONDEMN ISRAEL BUT SOFT-PEDAL CHINA’S ATROCITIES
?RIGHT NOW: Sirens sounding in southern Israel? pic.twitter.com/q4P0BwOTyx
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) May 20, 2021
Moments prior, Israel launched a new wave of airstrikes into Gaza, and Hamas retaliated and fired back. Since early Thursday morning, a total of 300 rockets were fired from Gaza, leading the U.S. ally to strike roughly 30 launching posts a number of militants, the IDF tweeted.
Prior to the strikes, the IDF issued a stern message to Hamas that it will not stop its bombardments despite growing calls for a ceasefire from the United Nations and President Joe Biden.
“Jews. Muslims. Christians. Druze,” the military wrote. “Over the last 11 days, Hamas has fired rockets indiscriminately at all Israeli citizens. In response, we have been precisely targeting the source of terrorism in Gaza — and we will continue to do so.”
On Thursday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the administration is trying “to do everything we can to bring an end to the conflict.”
At least 232 Palestinians have been killed thus far, including 65 children and 39 women, while more than 1,900 have sustained injuries, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Twelve have been slain in Israel, and more than 4,000 rockets have been exchanged between the U.S. ally and Hamas.
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Hamas, which was designated a terrorist organization by the United States in 1997, began firing rockets toward Israel last week amid a tense situation that boiled over with a looming Israeli Supreme Court decision on whether to uphold the eviction of Palestinian families from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah area in east Jerusalem.
Iran-backed forces in Gaza adopted an optimistic tone on Monday in the face of Israeli airstrikes as the militants maintain that the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict has reached a new phase.
“Sooner or later, the Zionist regime will have to submit to the conditions set by [Palestinian] resistance groups,” Hamas spokesman Abdul Latif al Qunu said, according to Iranian state media. “The fact that the Zionist regime’s armed forces target Palestinian infrastructure, roads and houses shows its real inability to confront the resistance’s attacks.”
On Wednesday, Biden pressured Netanyahu for an immediate ceasefire as he told reporters that he expected a “significant de-escalation.”
