Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told cabinet ministers that he had resumed negotiations with Hamas to reach understandings to calm the situation in the Gaza Strip. Israel’s Channel 13 quoted two ministers who participated in the cabinet meeting as saying that Netanyahu informed the ministers of resuming negotiations with Hamas through international mediators. According to the sources, negotiations with Hamas via the Egyptian mediator will focus on three axes that Israel has refrained from implementing since the announcement of the truce understandings at the end of 2018. Those include enlarging Gaza’s fishing area, easing Israeli restrictions on exports of agricultural products from the sector, and increasing the amount of the Qatari grant to poor families in Gaza. The two ministers stressed that this comes in an attempt to avoid a security escalation ahead of the upcoming Knesset elections scheduled for April 9. Netanyahu told the members of the security cabinet that negotiations would only proceed if calm continued along the eastern border of the besieged strip, with the Palestinians preparing to commemorate the first anniversary of the launching of the “Great Marches of Return”, which falls on March 30. Although some ministers objected to decision by Netanyahu and the security services, none of them asked for a vote on the resolution, the sources said. The channel quoted one of the ministers as saying that the Israeli premier and the leaders of the security services expressed satisfaction with what he called the Israeli response to the launch of missiles on Tel Aviv with 100 raids on Gaza, and the need to maintain the policy adopted by current government in this regard.