We, the Foreign Ministers of Turkey and Qatar, welcome the announcement by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and the US Secretary of State John Kerry on humanitarian ceasefire to commence at 8.00 am local time on Friday, August 1, 2014 for a period of 72 hours unless extended. We also strongly support the new initiative of the Palestinian Authority to visit Cairo with a delegation comprising all the Palestinian groups to negotiate a sustainable ceasefire in Gaza.

We warmly welcome this new process as a solid expression of continued political commitment by all Palestinian groups in the Palestinian national unity government.

We strongly support and hope that this process expeditiously culminates in a sustainable ceasefire desperately needed for the innocent Palestinian civilians in Gaza, who have been suffering from indiscriminate killings since the beginning of the Israeli bombardment on Gaza.

We welcome and value the substantial role played by the US Administration and appreciate the facilitating contribution by Egypt in hosting this new process.

We strongly urge Israel to respect the ensuing agreement on a sustainable ceasefire that will save innocent lives and property and allow delivery of urgent humanitarian aid to Gaza.

We are pleased to have contributed to the initiation of this new process which comes into being in part as a direct practical result of the joint efforts of Turkey and Qatar in coordination with the US effort in the past week. We reaffirm our commitment to continue to work for a negotiated sustainable ceasefire between the Parties and cooperate with the UN, the US, Egypt and other international partners to this end.