Talks mediated by the United States, Egypt and Qatar have been ongoing since Sunday
Residents close to the border think they can hear digging, while the Israeli military says the tunnels linking Gaza to Israel top their priority list.
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/ 15 January 2009
Israel struck fresh targets on Thursday and waged street battles in Gaza as the international community stepped up efforts to broker a truce.
Desmond Tutu, the South African archbishop, met the former Palestinian prime minister and Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Gaza at the start of a much-delayed United Nations investigation into the shelling by the Israeli military of a Palestinian house which killed 18 members of a single family in Beit Hanoun.
Hamas set out its conditions on Wednesday for a ceasefire with Israel, calling for an end to all acts of Israeli ”aggression” in the Gaza Strip and West Bank and the reopening of Gaza border crossings. Hamas is demanding a say in the future functioning of the crossings, a condition rejected by Israel.
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon condemned Israel for using ”excessive” force in the Gaza Strip and demanded a halt to its offensive after troops killed 61 people on the bloodiest day for Palestinians since the 1980s. The 1,5-million Palestinians crammed into the blockaded, 45km sliver of coast, enjoyed a relative respite early on Sunday from Israeli air strikes and raids.
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/ 5 February 2008
Israeli forces killed at least eight Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, a day after a suicide bombing in Israel claimed by the Islamist group. Six of the Hamas men were killed by an air strike on a security post in southern Gaza and two other armed members of the movement were shot dead by Israeli soldiers.
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/ 4 February 2008
Egyptian security forces closed the border with the Gaza Strip on Sunday nearly two weeks after the wall was first breached. Gunmen from the Hamas movement, which controls Gaza, appeared to be cooperating with the Egyptians, turning back crowds of Palestinians as barbed wire and metal barricades were installed.
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/ 15 January 2008
Israel killed 15 Palestinians, nearly all of them militants, in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, dealing its deadliest blow to Hamas in more than a year in raids that followed a peace mission by United States President George Bush. A volunteer from Ecuador, working on an Israeli kibbutz, was killed by a Palestinian sniper.
Israeli officials in Jerusalem are to deploy more than 10 000 police officers in a vast security operation ahead of the arrival this week of George Bush, the first United States president to visit in a decade. Graffiti are being cleaned off walls, road markings are being repainted and hundreds of American flags are being put up across the city.
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/ 23 December 2007
The Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, on Sunday ruled out ceasefire negotiations with the Islamist movement Hamas and said his military was fighting a ”true war” against armed groups in Gaza. He warned of further Israeli military strikes in the days ahead which he said were intended to prevent Palestinian militants from firing makeshift rockets into Israel.
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/ 30 November 2007
Israel’s top court has upheld a government decision to reduce the Gaza Strip’s fuel imports, but postponed planned electricity cuts to the Hamas-ruled territory, Israeli officials said on Friday. Israel began reducing the amount of fuel oil, diesel and petrol allowed into Gaza last month as part of economic sanctions.
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/ 26 October 2007
Israeli troops killed six Palestinian gunmen on Friday in some of the heaviest fighting for weeks in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian medical and militant sources said. Two Israeli troops were wounded, the army said, as three separate raids were mounted into the territory, backed by air strikes. Seven Palestinian militants and three civilians were wounded, hospital staff said.