Following a vote of the Israeli cabinet, Israel has announced a unilateral ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. IDF operations will end at 2AM local time. Details here, here, here and pretty much everywhere. Hamas, by the way, says it will continue its terrorist attacks.

From the Israeli website Gplanet comes this map displaying the IDF’s current ground operation in Gaza.

The arrows tracing the IDF incursion should be examined in the light of this report from the Washington Post:

Israeli military officials said forces were taking over strategic areas in order to decrease attacks on southern Israel, where more than 500 rockets have landed over the nine days of fighting. A senior Israeli military officer, speaking to foreign journalists in a conference call, said Israel was prepared to control those areas as long as needed to stop the rocket launches.

“We are not speaking about recapturing the Gaza Strip,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “This is not our objective. If we have to hold those areas, to stop the rockets, we will do this.”

Ron Ben-Yishai says:

The IDF will focus on causing casualties among Izz al-Din al-Qassam’s fighting force. Many members of this force, which is organized within four regional combat divisions, went into hiding during the aerial assault. Yet an IDF ground maneuver will force them to come out and fight. Yet another objective is to deliver a serious blow to the rocket-launching infrastructure located in major launching sites threatening southern residents. Experience shows that an IDF presence at launch areas prevents rocket attacks from these sites or at least greatly minimizing them.

Adds the Jerusalem Post:

“We know there will be dangers, difficulties and victims… It must be said that the ground operation entails dangers to the lives of soldiers,” Defense Minister Ehud Barak said at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv Saturday night. “We must end the hostile actions against Israel… We will not abandon our citizens.”

“This will be a lengthy operation and there will likely be casualties on our side,” a senior defense official said. “But our mission is to defend the home front. The purpose is to destroy Hamas’s infrastructure and impair its ability to fire rockets into Israel.”

As well as expecting casualties, the IDF has experienced its first fatality: Staff Sergeant Dvir Emanuelof, who was 22 years old. He died of wounds sustained in a mortar shell attack near Jabaliya, in the north-eastern corner of the above map.

His funeral was scheduled for 11PM at the Mount Herzl military cemetery in Jerusalem.