Rocket kills woman after Israel sets conditions for Gaza truce
JERUSALEM (AFP) — A rocket fired from the Gaza Strip killed an Israeli woman on Monday hours after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert set conditions for a truce with Palestinian militants in the Hamas-ruled territory.
The projectile slammed into a house in a small farming community near the Gaza border, killing an elderly woman, an Israeli army spokeswoman said, adding that the victim was around 70.
On Friday an Israeli man was killed in the same area by a mortar round launched from Gaza.
Both attacks were claimed by the Islamic Jihad group, which has refused to sign an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire proposal but also said it would not violate its terms.
Islamic Jihad militants earlier on Monday fired two long-range rockets at the seaside Israeli town of Ashkelon without causing casualties.
Israel has vowed to respond and says it holds the Islamist Hamas movement, which seized power in Gaza in June, responsible for all rocket attacks.
"The murder of the elderly Israeli woman in the Negev today is the second fatality in four days resulting from hostile fire from Gaza," Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said.
"Hamas controls the Gaza Strip, they are responsible for these attacks, and these deaths and they will be held accountable," he added.
More than 2,000 rockets and mortar bombs have been launched at southern Israel from the Strip since the beginning of the year, roughly the same number that were fired in all of 2007, according to the army.
The latest attack came hours after Olmert asked Egypt's intelligence chief Omar Suleiman to tell Gaza militants any truce would be conditional upon progress being made towards freeing a captive Israeli soldier.
Olmert also said Palestinian armed factions would have to stop smuggling weapons into Gaza if they want Israel to accept the Egyptian-brokered proposals to halt the violence in the besieged territory.
Suleiman was in Israel to seek the support of the country's leadership for the truce plan, which has the backing of 12 Palestinian factions, including Hamas and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah party.
In his talks with the Egyptian official, Olmert linked any truce to "progress in the negotiations for the release of Gilad Shalit," captured by Gaza militants in a 2006 cross-border raid, a senior Israeli official said.
"The prime minister asked Suleiman to obtain the response of the Palestinian factions to the conditions," the official said on condition of anonymity.
Unless he receives a positive response, Olmert will not convene his powerful security cabinet to discuss and vote on a truce.
"These are indispensable elements in any quiet," government spokesman Mark Regev told AFP. Both sides generally use the words "quiet" or "calm" to describe the proposed truce.
Defence Minister Ehud Barak earlier met Suleiman in Tel Aviv and said Israel would respond to any attack from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
Barak told Suleiman "Israel will have to launch a broad operation in Gaza if the rocket and mortar fire does not end," the defence minister's office said in a statement after the meeting.
Hamas has demanded that Israel free hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Shalit, but Egyptian-brokered negotiations on the details of an exchange have made little headway.
Egypt has been mediating between the two sides because Israel refuses any dialogue with organisations it blacklists as terror groups.
It has also imposed a crippling blockade on the impoverished territory aimed at pressuring the Hamas-run authorities to halt persistent rocket and mortar fire by militants into southern Israel.
Hamas has said the rocket fire will cease when Israel lifts the blockade and allows the reopening of Gaza's border crossings, including the Rafah crossing with Egypt which bypasses Israel.
In Gaza City senior Hamas leader Mahmud al-Zahar said any truce must require Israel to "stop all forms of aggression against our people and lift the blockade imposed on Gaza and the rest of the Palestinian territories.
But Zahar reiterated that there was no possibility of Hamas recognising the Jewish state.
"The first message we send to the Israeli side is and has always been that we will not accept any usurping entity on one inch" of historic Palestine, he said.
