GAZA/JERUSALEM--A ceasefire to end a surge of deadly violence in the Gaza Strip and southern Israel took hold on Monday after hundreds of Palestinian rocket attacks and Israeli air strikes.
The latest round of hostilities erupted three days ago, peaking on Sunday when rockets and missiles from Hamas Islamist-run Gaza killed four civilians in Israel, local health officials said. Israeli strikes killed 21 Palestinians, over half of them civilians, at the weekend, Gaza health authorities said.
Israel does not acknowledge ceasefire deals with Gaza militant groups, which it considers terrorist organisations. But officials in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government spoke of a reciprocal return to quiet.
One of the Israeli officials suggested that Israel's arch-enemy Iran - a major financier of the Islamic Jihad movement - had been behind the Gaza escalation.
Suffering under renewed U.S. sanctions and Israeli strikes against its military assets in Syria, Iran may have seen stoking Palestinian violence as a way of telling Israel, "we will get back at you through (Islamic) Jihad and Gaza," Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz told the Israeli radio station 90 FM.
Israel's military said that more than 600 rockets and other projectiles - over 150 of them intercepted - had been fired at southern Israeli cities and villages since Friday. It said it shelled or carried out air strikes on some 320 militant sites. The violence abated before dawn, after Palestinian officials said Egypt, Qatar and the United Nations had mediated a truce, and just as Gazans were preparing to begin the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
"Over the last two days we struck Hamas and Islamic Jihad with great force. We hit over 350 targets. We struck at terrorist leaders and operatives and we destroyed terrorist buildings," Netanyahu said in statement. "The campaign is not over and it demands patience and good judgment. We are preparing to continue. The goal has been, and remains, ensuring quiet and security for the residents of the south."
There was little enthusiasm for the ceasefire in Israeli rocket-hit communities near Gaza. Some residents said Israel agreed to the truce because it did not want rocket fire to spoil the Independence Day holiday this week or Eurovision Song Contest finals the begin in Tel Aviv on May 14. "In a month, in two weeks, in a month and a half, it will all happen again - we achieved nothing. I think Israel needs to strike them very, very hard so that they learn their lesson," said Haim Cohen, 69, a retired electrician from the city of Ashdod.
In Gaza, Palestinians attended funerals and extricated bodies from collapsed buildings. "This is a very tough Ramadan. We will not feel festive," said Sumayya Usruf, whose cousin, husband and four-month-old child were killed in an apartment in northern Gaza.
