Before a decision is made whether to launch a ground offensive, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu intends to fully exhaust the diplomatic efforts to achieve a long-term cease fire, following his conversation with US President Barack Obama on Monday.
Israel would prefer to achieve the objectives of the operation without a ground offensive, but if the only way to protect the citizens of Israel is through a ground offensive, then we will do so, Jerusalem says.
Positioned around the Gaza Strip are tens of thousands of troops prepared to launch a ground offensive.
According to AFP, Israeli ministers decided overnight to hold off from launching a ground operation in the Gaza Strip to give Egyptian-led truce efforts a chance to work, a senior Israeli official told AFP on Tuesday.
"A decision was taken that for the time being there is a temporary hold on the ground incursion to give diplomacy a chance to succeed," he said after a late-night meeting of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's key ministers, the Forum of Nine.
"They discussed both the state of the diplomacy and the military operation," he said on condition of anonymity.
As an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire plan took shape at indirect negotiations in Cairo between Israel and a Hamas team, a stream of top-level diplomats headed for the region to throw their weight behind efforts to end the violence which on Tuesday entered its seventh day.
In addition, Netanyahu will continue to confer with other world leaders and met Tuesday with German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon, who is currently in Cairo, is to meet Israeli President Shimon Peres and US officials said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would break away from an Asia visit to travel to Israel, Egypt and the West Bank.
Palestinian officials said she was expected to visit Ramallah on Wednesday morning for talks with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.
In addition, the Prime Minister will continue to confer with other world leaders and will meet with the German Foreign Minister.
At the same time Israel is building up its ground forces along the Gaza border, ready to go in if required, the Israeli official told AFP.
"Preparations for the ground incursion continue," he said.
"If we see that diplomacy does not bear fruit -- and the time we've given to diplomacy is limited -- all the preparations are being undertaken so that if and when the order is given the ground incursion can happen expeditiously."
A statement from the Knesset, Israel's parliament, said its Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee would meet during the day to rubber stamp a request by Defence Minister Ehud Barak to raise to 75,000 the number of army reservists he can call up, in a move already approved by the cabinet.
At least 16,000 reservists had been mobilised by the end of last week, out of 30,000 callups previously authorised.
The army would not give an updated number on Tuesday, saying only that reservists were constantly being drafted according to need.
"Operation Pillar of Defense" has attained significant achievements, according to the Israeli army. "Hamas and the other terror organisations in the Gaza Strip have been hit hard," it said.
The army has so far launched precise strikes against more than 1,400 targets, including a surgical strike on Hamas' top commander Ahmad Ja'abri, and other Hamas and Islamic Jihad commanders.
The air force also inflicted significant damage to the long-range Iranian-made Fajr rocket launchers capable of targeting central Israel and their ability to launch rockets towards the south.
Lebanese Hezbollah leaderr Hassan Nasrallah on Monday thanked Iranian leaders for transferring weapons to Hamas and other terror organizations in the Gaza strip.
Israel has delivered material showing that Hamas hides itself amongst the civilian population in the Gaza Strip and from there launches rockets targeted at Israel.
"In spite of this, the number of civilian casualties is relatively low," the army said. "The IDF utilizes different techniques to warn the civilian population including the use of fliers, phone calls, SMS messages, and others."
On Tuesday, a rocket was fired from the Gaza Strip toward Jerusalem, moments after air raid sirens sounded across the city.
It’s the second rocket attack aimed at Jerusalem since the start of the conflict last Wednsesday. Jerusalem is located some 80 kilometers (50 miles) from Gaza.