Outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has agreed to visit Cairo for talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on an Egyptian-sponsored ceasefire proposal, according to the London-based Arab newspaper Al Hayat. The Israeli government has not commented on the Thursday morning report, which added that Prime Minister Olmert will not arrive until after the Security Cabinet meets again. He also is reported to have agreed to meet with Palestine Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
Egyptian Ambassador to the United Nations Maged Abdelaziz told reporters on Wednesday that Israel and the Palestinian Authority have agreed to send officials for separate talks in Cairo on the Egyptian-French truce initiative. Amos Gilad, head of the security-political branch of the Defense Ministry, is to arrive in Egypt Thursday morning for talks as the IDF intensifies its counterterrorist campaign in Gaza.
Egypt also has invited Hamas, but it is not known if it will send representatives. Senior Iran political leader and Speaker of the Parliament Ali Larijani met with Hamas chairman Khaled Mashaal in Damascus Wednesday. Larijani was formerly head of Iran's nuclear development program.
Israel, with increasing support from Western leaders, has insisted that a truce agreement must result in stopping terror and not only the current fighting. The sticking point is how to stop smuggling of weapons in to Gaza, where Hamas still retains thousands of deadly rockets.
Any ceasefire will have to meet Israel's demands that it be effective in the field so that there will not be a repeat of the results of the United Nations truce that ended the Second Lebanon War. The agreement called for disarming Hizbullah and halting the flow of weapons from Syrian into Hizbullah's army, but there were no effective enforcement procedures. Intelligence personnel have estimated that Hizbullah now has three times the number of rockets it possessed before the war.
Israel has proposed that foreign forces be placed on the border between Egypt and Gaza, but Hamas so far has rejected the idea.
Meanwhile, the United Nations Security Council will meet on Wednesday on its ceasefire efforts, which Libya has thwarted with a demand for condemnation of Israel.