Israel, Palestinian Islamic Jihad reach truce after five days of war

Israel and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group reached a ceasefire deal on Saturday night after five days of fighting.

The agreement was brokered by Egypt.

"[Israeli] National Security Council director Tzachi Hanegbi, on instruction from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, thanked Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and expressed the appreciation of the State of Israel for Egypt’s intensive efforts to secure a ceasefire,” said a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem.

“The NSC director made it clear that Israel’s acceptance of the Egyptian initiative means that ‘quiet will be met with quiet,’ and that if Israel is attacked or threatened, it will continue to do everything that it needs to in order to defend itself,” added the statement.

Tensions erupted on Tuesday morning, when the IDF responded to rocket-fire from the Gaza Strip by killing three top PIJ commanders. The IDF identified the targets as Khalil Bahitini, PIJ’s commander in northern Gaza; Jahed Ahnam, a senior member of the terror group’s “military” council; and Tarek Azaldin, who directed its activities in Judea and Samaria.

The commander of PIJ’s rocket force, Ali Hassan Muhammad Ghali, and two other terror operatives were killed in an early morning attack on Thursday on a residential building in the Sheikh Hamad neighborhood of Khan Younis. The Israeli Air Force on Thursday afternoon killed Ahmed Abu-Deka, a senior member of the PIJ rocket launching force.

On Friday, an Israeli airstrike killed Iyad al-Hassani, the “most senior” PIJ figure in Gaza.

Israeli Inga Avramyan, 80, was killed when a rocket fired from Gaza struck a four-story building in Rehovot, 12 miles south of Tel Aviv, on Thursday evening.

It was the only Israeli fatality during “Operation Shield and Arrow.”

A Palestinian from Gaza working in Israel on Saturday was also killed by PIJ rocket fire.

Jerusalem reportedly rejected conditioning the truce on halting targeted killings of PIJ terrorists and handing over the body of PIJ member Khader Adnan, who died in prison last week after an 87-day hunger strike.

After he died, PIJ fired more than 100 rockets towards the Jewish state in under 24 hours.

During the latest fighting, PIJ launched more than 1,250 rockets at Israel, to which the IDF responded by striking nearly 400 terror assets in Gaza.