We are waking up to great news in the Middle East this morning.

Hamas and all the Palestinian factions have agreed on a cease-fire. Hamas is giving Israel one week to pull out the troops out of Gaza. A senior Hamas official also said the group’s wing in Syria agreed to a weeklong cease-fire.

A longer cease-fire will be conditional on Israel withdrawing from Gaza the troops it sent into the strip two weeks ago. In addition, militants will also demand that Israel open border crossings into Gaza.

News of the cease-fire came after militants in Hamas-ruled Gaza fired salvoes of rockets into southern Israel on Sunday, defying a unilateral cease-fire called by Israel and threatening to reignite three weeks of violence that Palestinian medics say has killed more than 1,000 people and turned Gaza’s streets into battlegrounds.

An Israeli security chief told Cabinet ministers the military operation “is not over” and that the next few days would be critical to determining whether it would be relaunched.

This may not be the end-all, but it is definitely a step in the right direction and it means a LOT of innocent lives will be saved.

[image: WENN]