Diplomats convened in Cairo on Wednesday to negotiate a lasting resolution that will keep the peace in Israel and Gaza.

A 72-hour cease-fire has halted aggression from both sides, and Israel has withdrawn its troops from the Gaza Strip.

Fighting halted at 8 a.m. local time Tuesday under the Egyptian-backed cease-fire, and Israel said the last of its troops are located just outside Gaza, Bloomberg reports.

U.S., Palestinian and Egyptian diplomats are in Cairo to negotiate a longer-term peace deal. Israel's Haaretz newspaper also said that an Israeli delegation arrived in Cairo late Tuesday.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office did not comment, but Israel previously said it would join in the talks if the cease-fire holds, as earlier ones dissolved within a few short hours. So far, the current cease-fire is preventing further violence.

Israel said the Gaza offensive was necessary to end rocket attacks in Israel and destroy Hamas' tunnels, which were used by militants to infiltrate Israel. The offensive has yielded the deadliest clash in the territory since 2005, when Israeli settlers and soldiers were forced out of Gaza.

Around 1,868 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict, the majority of whom are civilians, according to Palestinian officials. Sixty-seven Israelis have been killed, 64 of them soldiers.

Maj. Gen. Sami Turgeman said that troops are "deployed on the Gaza border and ready for any future mission." He added that a violation of the truce by Hamas would be a "grave mistake."

Israel and Hamas, the militant Islamist group that rules Gaza, are seeking a long-term cease-fire that tackles issues that earlier cease-fires did not address. The Israeli side wants to ensure that Hamas will not attack Israeli territory in the future, while Hamas is seeking a lifting of Egypt and Israel's blockade of Gaza.

Israel said it has significantly hindered the ability of Hamas to attack Israel, as they estimate that Palestinians only have one-third of the 10,000 rockets they had in store prior to the offensive.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad, another militant group in Gaza, fired 3,356 into Israel since July 8. The Israeli military said it destroyed another one-third of the supply in the offensive, as well as 32 tunnels.

Martin Indyk, vice president of the Brookings Institution, told Bloomberg, "The Israeli demand is that the Palestinian militias and terrorist organizations -- not just Hamas but also Palestine's Islamic Jihad and various other groups -- disarm."

A lasting peace accord may only be implemented if the Palestinian Authority's influence is expanded. President Mahmoud Abbas, who heads the PA, wants to have more control over Gaza than Hamas. Such a deal would include having control over border crossings, and ensuring that only the Palestinian Authority would have authority over weapons.

Fatah, which runs with the West Bank, split with Hamas seven years ago. The two groups remained separate until the two groups formed a unification government after U.S.-brokered peace talks broke down in April.

Fatah's Azzam al-Ahmad is heading the Palestinian delegation in Cairo, which includes officials from Hamas. Besides Israel, both the United States and the European Union consider Hamas a terrorist group.

Frank Lowenstein, the U.S. special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian relations, is heading to Cairo in support of the Egyptian proposal.

Yiftah Shapir, a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, said neither side has been victorious, but that each side will claim victory.

"Hamas has already claimed success because for them it was about withstanding the might of the Israeli military for 28 days," Shapir told Bloomberg. "Tactically Israel achieved its goals but strategically, which was about restoring our deterrence, it remains to be seen."

Once the cease-fire took effect, Palestinians displaced by the fighting returned to their homes, or what was left of them. Estimates by a Palestinian rights group projects that at least 10,000 Gaza homes were destroyed in the fighting. Mosques, medical centers, schools, power stations and sewage facilities have been hit by the conflict, causing a shortage in food, water and electricity.

Hamas fired more than 3,300 rockets into Israel towns and cities and staged armed raids, while Israel's air force and navy hit more than 4,800 targets in Gaza.

Around 90 percent of Hamas' rockets -- most of which were fired from civilian areas, prompting many in the international community to claim that Hamas uses civilians as human shields -- were intercepted by Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system.