REPORT: Israel accepts new Gaza ceasefire - Israeli officials

Israel has accepted a new Gaza ceasefire proposed by Egyptian mediators and will send negotiators to Cairo on Monday if the truce holds, Israeli officials said.        

This comes after a Palestinian official said an agreement had been reached on a new 72-hour Gaza ceasefire.       

"The Israeli and the Palestinian sides have agreed to the new 72-hour truce to begin serious negotiations leading to a durable ceasefire," said the official, who is close to Egyptian-mediated talks. He said an Israeli delegation, which left Cairo  before a previous three-day truce expired on Friday, would return there before midnight (2100 GMT), and that a ceasefire could begin at that time.

Izzat al-Reshiq, a Hamas negotiator in Cairo, told Reuters that Palestinian factions will formally accept a new 72-hour ceasefire in Gaza after Israel agreed to resume talks without pre-conditions.      

"In light of Israel's acceptance of the truce and their return without pre-conditions ... we will inform the Egyptian brothers of our positive response," he said.        

Reshiq said the Palestinian factions had not given up any of their demands, which include an end to the blockade of Gaza and the release of prisoners.        

Earlier on Sunday, Israel said it was prepared for protracted military action in Gaza and would not negotiate under rocket fire as Egypt crafted a new truce plan to try to keep indirect Israeli-Palestinian talks alive.      

Israeli air strikes and shelling killed three Palestinians in Gaza, including a boy of 14 and a woman, medics said, in a third day of renewed fighting that has jeopardized efforts by Egypt, which also borders the enclave, to end the month-old hostilities.         

Since a three-day truce expired on Friday, Palestinian rocket and mortar salvoes have focused on Israeli kibbutzim, or collective farms, just across the border in what appeared to be a strategy of sapping the Jewish state's morale without triggering another ground invasion of the tiny Gaza Strip.          

A month of war has killed 1,893 Palestinians and 67 Israelis while devastating wide tracts of small, densely populated Gaza. But international pressure for a ceasefire has been weaker than in earlier rounds of Israeli-Palestinian conflict given other international security crises distracting major powers.         

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters that Egypt had presented a new ceasefire plan to keep negotiations going. Israeli representatives had flown home on Friday, hours before the previous truce ended, and Palestinian delegates threatened to leave unless they came back.      

"At no stage did we declare (Israel's military offensive) was over," he said. "The operation will continue until its objective - the restoration of quiet over a protracted period - is achieved," he said in public remarks at the weekly cabinet meeting. "I said at the beginning and throughout the operation - it will take time, and stamina is required."           

However, the violence over the past three days has been less intense than at the war's outset, with reduced firing on both sides. Israel withdrew ground forces from Gaza on Tuesday.