Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni spoke with her Egyptian counterpart by phone Monday as Cairo urgently tried to put together a new Gaza ceasefire agreement. Hours earlier, Israel launched an international diplomatic effort to explain why it is justified to stage an attack on Hamas to put an end to rocket and mortar attacks.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit phoned his Israeli counterpart to ask about Israel's intentions, and she told him that Israel cannot continue to ignore the danger to the security of southern Israel residents.
Hamas responded by holding fire Monday morning, leaving western Negev residents living with an unsettling quiet following more than a month of almost daily attacks. The group's spokesmen said that terrorists halted fire against Israel at the request of Egyptian mediators. However, by mid-afternoon, after a nearly 24-hour period without attacks, terrorists fired one mortar shell on the Eshkol region. There were no reports of injuries or damage.
Hamas said that Egypt did not invite it to discuss a new agreement, but the London-based Arabic-language newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi confirmed that Egyptian has been trying the last three days to arrange a truce.
Palestinian Authority Chairman and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner also are pushing for an arrangement to avoid an all-out clash.
"The Secretary-General is extremely concerned at statements calling into question the continuation of the Egyptian-brokered 'calm' in and around Gaza," his press office said in a statement.
The Al Quds newspaper stated that a new agreement included Israel's agreement to open more Gaza crossings, but the Olmert administration, under widespread public criticism, may use the opportunity to demand the release of kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit.
Outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert engineered Cabinet passage of the June 19 ceasefire on the basis that it would establish the basis for freeing Shalit. One month before the agreement, he stated that he would not agree to a ceasefire without the release of Shalit and the assurance that there would be no more smuggling of weapons. 
Outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert engineered Cabinet passage of the June 19 ceasefire on the basis that it would establish the basis for freeing Shalit.
"Shalit is an integral element of the situation," Olmert spokesman Mark Regev said at the time. "Hamas cannot expect Israel to sit by idly when they are holding a young serviceman hostage now for almost two years."
However, intelligence officials have said that smuggling has continued since the agreement, which did not provide for any guarantees or Israeli surveillance. The ceasefire was more virtual than real because more than 50 rockets and mortars exploded in the western Negev until early November, when escalated violence obliterated the pact.
At one Cabinet discussion on the proposed June 19 truce, Prime Minister Olmert told ministers, "The current reality there needs to change - either there will be calm or the State of Israel will act with such force that in the end there will be calm."