AGREEMENT was reached last night on a draft UN Security Council resolution that would call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. "In principle there is an agreement," said Arab League UN envoy Yahya Mahmassani after a day of negotiations. Palestinian representative Riyad Mansour said: "Yes, we have a deal," and a western diplomat said: "Apparently there is an agreement."
Arab League secretary-general Amr Moussa said the council would vote on the draft last night but the western diplomat said the vote could be delayed until today.
Diplomats said the resolution would call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
Yesterday Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert declared that Israel had still not achieved all its goals in the military campaign.
Addressing troops, Mr Olmert said: "The decision about how we make sure that the quiet in the south remains is still before us, and the Israel defence forces have still not been asked to carry out everything that is necessary to achieve this." Israeli diplomatic sources said the decision on whether or not to step up the operation would be taken in the next day or two, depending on progress at clinching a ceasefire.
Israeli media reported that unnamed generals were pressing politicians to allow the operation to continue to enhance the country's military deterrence.
Two senior Israeli officials held talks in Cairo yesterday on the details of the truce, after Israel welcomed the Franco-Egyptian initiative in principle. There has still been no definitive response from Hamas to the truce proposals.
French president Nicolas Sarkozy said yesterday the key to reaching a ceasefire was the permanent cessation of arms smuggling into Gaza.
On the ground, the fighting raged on the 13th day of the war.
Since Israel launched its ground offensive on Saturday there have been no reliable statistics on casualties, although Palestinian medical sources estimate that about 800 people, combatants and civilians, have been killed. Seven Israeli soldiers have died - four of them in "friendly fire" incidents - as well as three civilians.
Israel again implemented a three-hour "humanitarian pause", to allow vital supplies to cross into Gaza. During the lull 35 bodies were discovered in rubble in areas on the outskirts of Gaza city. Palestinian militants continued firing rockets into Israel during the pause.
The UN, which gives food and aid to about 750,000 Gazans, suspended its work in the Gaza Strip, saying its staff and compounds had come under attack by the Israeli military. It said two drivers in a marked UN convoy were killed yesterday by an Israeli tank shell.
For the first time since the start of the war, the focus in Israel yesterday morning shifted to the northern border with Lebanon, after two rockets landed in the western Galilee.
Nervous citizens feared that Hizbullah was opening a second front. Israeli artillery shelled south Lebanon, but the rocket fire, which injured two people in a nursing home, turned out to be an isolated incident. Hizbullah denied involvement.
The son of Chaim Herzog, the Irish-born former president of Israel, yesterday criticised the Government for what he said was a one-sided condemnation of the offensive against Hamas in Gaza.
Speaking to RTÉ, Isaac Herzog, the Israeli minister for welfare, said: "I would expect them to understand where we are, to understand that any democratically elected government needs to defend its people.
"Where was the Irish Government in these comments, why did we have to read only Israel is to blame, and [no criticism] of Hamas and its influence in the region and its fundamentalist and fanatical hatred of Israel?" he added.
- (additional reporting Reuters)