Dubai: International efforts for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza ramped up on Friday, as tensions erupted in the West Bank where five Palestinians were killed by Israeli gunfire.
The United States has worked with Egypt on a plan that, diplomats say, would provide a humanitarian pause in the deadly conflict ahead of talks on key issues.
The plan is being pressed by US Secretary of State John Kerry, who is with UN chief Ban Ki-moon in Cairo for talks to end violence that has killed 832 Palestinians as well as 36 people on the Israeli side.
A French lawyer said he had lodged a complaint at the International Criminal Court on behalf of the Palestinian justice minister accusing the Israeli army of “war crimes”.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu flew to Qatar on Friday to help efforts after Kerry reached out to Hamas allies Ankara and Doha to push for a ceasefire.
Under the proposal, once a humanitarian lull takes hold, delegations from Israel and Hamas will arrive in Cairo - which has mediated past conflicts between the two - for indirect talks that could lead to a lasting deal.
Hamas’s exiled Doha-based leader Khalid Mesha’al insisted in a Thursday interview with the BBC that any truce must include a guaranteed end to Israel’s eight-year blockade of Gaza.
In the West Bank, tensions over the situation in Gaza erupted into protests in several cities after Friday prayers. Overnight, one Palestinian was killed and 150 injured in clashes in the West Bank, and on Friday afternoon, four more Palestinians were shot dead by Israeli troops and settlers.
In Gaza, the death toll rose to 832 on the 18th day of the conflict, with a five-year-old child among the latest deaths announced, along with an Islamic Jihad spokesman, and two women, one of them pregnant.
