Egyptian and UN officials on Tuesday night were pushing for a ceasefire between Israel and Gaza terrorist groups, as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad vowed to step up attacks against the Jewish state in retaliation for the targeted killing of a PIJ terror chief.
Israel killed senior Islamic Jihad commander Baha Abu al-Ata in Gaza in a dawn strike on Tuesday. The Gaza terror organizations subsequently fired large salvos of rockets at cities and towns in the Jewish state, prompting ongoing retaliatory Israeli strikes in the Palestinian enclave.
Egyptian officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Cairo was attempting to de-escalate tensions between Israel and the terror groups. The officials added the Egyptian General Intelligence Service stepped up communications and “opened channels” with the US and the European Union.
In the past year, both the Egyptian General Intelligence Services and UN Special Coordinator to the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov have been involved in brokering unofficial ceasefires between Israel and the terror groups.
Mladenov “is heading urgently to Cairo,” a diplomatic source told The Times of Israel on Tuesday night, adding that the international organization “has been involved throughout the day to de-escalate” tensions between Israel and terror groups in the Gaza Strip.
Both Egyptian intelligence officials and Mladenov have frequently visited Gaza to discuss the truce agreements.
The possibility of a further escalation between Israel and terror groups in the Gaza Strip is “high,” according to a source close to the discussions on a truce.
“The situation remains very complicated and the risk of escalation is high,” the source told The Times of Israel.”It is too early to talk of mediation yet. The goal now is to stop the escalation.”
The Ramallah-based Palestinian leadership has been in contact with Egypt and the United Nations to push for a ceasefire between Israel and terror groups in the Gaza Strip, Azzam al-Ahmad, a senior Fatah and Palestine Liberation Organization official said earlier on Tuesday.
“We have been in touch with the Egyptian intelligence as well as United Nations to push for a restoration of calm and an end to the spilling of blood,” Ahmad told The Times of Israel in a phone call.
Despite the appeals for calm, unnamed senior Islamic Jihad officials said the “real response” to Abu al-Ata’s elimination has yet to come, Channel 12 reported on Tuesday.
“The coming hours will speak for themselves,” Islamic Jihad spokesman Musab al-Breim told the Islamic Jihad-linked Palestine Today news site.
A spokesman for the al-Quds Brigades, the PIJ’s military wing, warned of further rocket fire from the Gaza Strip on Tuesday evening, saying Israel will not determine how the current round of fighting in the enclave ends.
“We hold the enemy fully responsible for the consequences of its stupid decision to assassinate the leadership of the resistance,” Abu Hamza said. “The coming hours will add a new headline to the record of defeats of the enemy’s rash prime minister, who has only brought the Zionists destruction and war.”
Abu Hamza continued: “We tell the enemy: Perhaps you succeeded in starting this aggression against our people and resistance, but you will not be able to determine when it ends.”
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