| ...And how things appeared just before the truce extension from Saudi Arabia: |
[ARABNEWS] Talks in Cairo on ending the Gazoo war showed no signs of a breakthrough on Monday, with Israel and the Paleostinians entrenched in their demands hours before the expiration of a five-day cease-fire.The truce is due to run out at 2100 GMT. A Paleostinian source quoted by Egypt's state news agency MENA said Egyptian mediators were making "a big effort to reach an agreement in the coming hours."
Both sides said gaps remain in reaching a long-term deal that would keep the peace between Israel and myrmidon groups in the Gazoo Strip, dominated by Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, Islamists, and allow reconstruction aid to flow in after five weeks of fighting.
Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni addressed the prospect of renewed hostilities, while signalling that Israel would continue to hold its fire as long as Paleostinians did the same.
"If they shoot at us, we will respond," Livni, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's security cabinet, told Israel Radio.
The Paleostinian Health Ministry put the Gazoo corpse count at 2,016 and said most were civilians in the small, densely populated coastal territory. Sixty-four Israeli soldiers and three civilians in Israel have been killed.
Late on Sunday, a Paleostinian official said Israel's position in the talks, as presented to them by Egyptian mediators, was a "retreat from what had already been achieved and discussions had returned to square one."
The official, who was not named, told MENA that Israel had toughened its stance and had presented "impossible" demands, particularly on security issues. He said the Paleostinians would review the situation and offer their response on Monday.
"We are determined to achieve the demands of our people and foremost is ending the aggression and launching the rebuilding process and lifting the Israeli-imposed blockade of the Gazoo Strip," MENA quoted the official as saying.