CAIRO -- With a deadline just hours away, Egyptian mediators shuttled between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators in hopes of reaching a long-term cease-fire arrangement that would allow reconstruction of the Gaza Strip after a month-long conflict that killed more than 2,000 people.
In an apparent attempt to pressure Hamas, Egypt said it would co-host an international fundraising conference for Gaza, but only if a deal is reached. Israel, meanwhile, said that in recent months it had arrested nearly 100 Hamas operatives in the West Bank in a purported plot to topple Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Less than an hour before the temporary truce was to expire, Egypt confirmed that a deal had not been reached but that talks on a long-term arrangement in the Palestinian territory would continue.
"Palestinians and Israelis agreed on extending ceasefire to 24 hours to continue current negotiations," Egypt's official news agency said, quoting an official statement.
Since last week, Egypt has been hosting indirect talks between Israel and Hamas aimed at ending the devastating conflict.
Gaza Health Ministry official Ashraf al-Kidra said Monday that the death toll from the fighting had jumped to more than 2,000 Palestinians, the majority of them civilians, while United Nations officials, who often take more time to verify figures, put the number at 1,976. Thousands of homes were destroyed, and tens of thousands of people remain huddled in U.N. shelters. Israel lost 67 people, all but three of them soldiers.
Egypt met with both sides late Monday, but gaps appeared to remain wide. Hamas is demanding an end to a seven-year Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza that has devastated the local economy. Israel wants guarantees that Hamas, which fired thousands of rockets into Israel during the fighting, will be disarmed.
The blockade, imposed after Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007, remained the main stumbling block. It has greatly limited the movement of Palestinians in and out of the territory of 1.8 million people, restricted the flow of goods into Gaza, and blocked virtually all exports.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu already said this week that he would not allow Hamas to win a diplomatic victory at the negotiating table.
An official in Abbas' office said the Palestinian leader was supposed to arrive in Qatar, the base for top Hamas leaders, today and stay until Friday.
He is to have meetings with Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal and the emir of Qatar today. The official said Abbas would urge Mashaal and the Qataris to support the Egyptian cease-fire efforts. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media about internal deliberations.
Robert Serry, the U.N. special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, urged the parties "to reach an understanding on a durable cease-fire which also addresses the underlying issues afflicting Gaza."
"At the very least, we hope that the cease-fire will be extended and the situation will remain quiet," he said.
Palestinian negotiators said there was no desire for a return to fighting.
"The war is behind us now," said Ziad Nakhleh, head of the Islamic Jihad faction within the Palestinian delegation in Cairo. "We are not returning to war."
Hamas repeatedly has said it will not give up its weapons, while Israel says it needs to maintain some degree of control over Gaza crossings to prevent the smuggling of weapons and weapons-production materials into the coastal strip.
In a possible move to pressure Hamas to soften its positions, Norway's foreign minister said Monday that his country and Egypt were planning to co-host a donor conference in Cairo for the reconstruction of Gaza. Boerge Brende said invitations would be sent out once there is an agreement in the Egypt-mediated truce talks with Israel.
Meanwhile, Israel's Shin Bet security service said Monday that it had thwarted what it described as a Hamas coup attempt in the West Bank aimed at toppling Abbas, though it offered few details. The security agency said Hamas operatives had tried to start an uprising that would have led to the collapse of Abbas' Western-backed Palestinian Authority.
The Shin Bet said it had arrested more than 90 Hamas operatives, confiscated dozens of weapons that had been smuggled into the West Bank and more than $170,000 aimed at funding attacks. It produced photos of the confiscated weapons and cash and a flowchart of the Hamas operatives who had been questioned.
The Shin Bet said the plot was orchestrated by senior Hamas official Salah Arouri, who is based in Turkey and enjoys the support of the local officials there.
Neither Hamas nor Abbas had any immediate comment to the claim.
Information for this article was contributed by Josef Federman and Edith M. Lederer of The Associated Press.
A Section on 08/19/2014