A top adviser to Egypt's president said that Israeli forces and Hamas militants will cease fire later Tuesday, ending nearly a week of fighting in the Gaza Strip that continued throughout the day, CBS News correspondent Clarissa Ward reports from Cairo.
The unnamed adviser to Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi said Morsi would announce the cease-fire at 2 p.m. ET (9 p.m. Cairo time) and that it will go into effect three hours later, Ward reports.
Possible Israeli, Palestinian cease-fire delayed as Gaza Strip fighting intensifies - CBS News
Although the word hudna does not actually appear in the Koran, it was the term used by early koranic commentators for an event described in the Koran’s 48th sura, known to Muslims as Al-Fath. “The Victory.” (Wherefrom, incidentally, Yasser Arafat’s Fatah took its name.) There, the Koran relates how, in 628 C.E. Mohammed marched from Medina with 1500 believers of his native city of Mecca, from which a numerically superior anti-Muslim army came out against him; rather than fight, however, the two sides, meeting at a place called Hudaibiyah, declared a hudna in which each made concessions. Although some of Mohammed’s closest followers, such as his general Umar Ibn al-Khatib, were opposed to this truce, which they thought dishonorable, they had no choice but to accept the prophet’s decision. Two years later, it was vindicated in their eyes when Mohammed annulled the truce, marched again on Mecca with a far larger force and took the city.
The message is clear: Although Hamas may agree to a truce with Israel for tactical reasons, such a hudna like that accepted by Mohammed at Hudaibiyah is only temporary. When the right time comes, the war will be renewed and fought until final victory.