Hamas security forces also reported Saturday’s strikes. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

The Israeli air force struck two “smuggling tunnels” on the southern Gaza border and one “weaponry storage site” in Gaza City, a military spokesman told CNN.

“In all strikes, a hit was identified,” the spokesman said, adding that the strikes were in response to six rockets targeting Israeli since Saturday morning.

According to the Israeli military, more than 100 rockets, mortar shells and missiles have been fired at Israel by Palestinian militants in Gaza since Hamas leaders announced a cease-fire on January 18.

Israel also announced a cease-fire and pulled its troops out of Gaza in January, ending a three-week military campaign that the Israeli military said was aimed at halting the rocket fire.

Egypt has been trying to broker a broader cease-fire agreement between Hamas and Israel. Israel is demanding that Hamas release kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit before it fully reopens the border crossings with Gaza.

Hamas has rejected discussing Shalit’s release as part of any cease-fire negotiation.

Israel launches airstrikes into Gaza – CNN.com

“Should a decision of any kind be required, it will be made only via a meeting of the Security Cabinet and after taking into account all of the new political circumstances that have been created in the wake of the recent Israeli elections,” Yanki Galanti, the media adviser for Ehud Olmert, said Saturday night in a statement.

The consultations are to take place among Olmert, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

Israel held elections Tuesday which resulted in a near-tie between Livni’s centrist Kadima party and the right-wing Likud party, led by Benjamin Netanyahu. It is not yet clear who will emerge as prime minister.

Israel agreed January 21 to temporarily halt its three-week military operation in Gaza, which it began in response to repeated rocket attacks into southern Israel. Since then, Egypt has been trying to broker an agreement between the two sides.

On Friday, a spokesman for Hamas told CNN that Israeli and Hamas negotiators have “almost reached agreement” on a long-term truce.

Tahir Annono, who is in Cairo for the truce meetings, said there would be meetings Friday and Saturday, and on Sunday an announcement would be made.

Hamas’ deputy leader, Moussa Abu Marzouk, said that the truce would last for 18 months and all commercial border crossings between Gaza and Israel would be opened.

The security of Israelis who have been targets of the rocket attacks from Gaza and the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit are priorities as Israel considers the next steps in its conflict with Hamas, Olmert said Saturday through his media adviser.

Olmert has been under pressure to secure Shalit’s release as part of a broader cease-fire deal. However, the cease-fire in January did not include Shalit’s release as a condition.

Shalit was 19 when he was captured on June 25, 2006, by Palestinian militants in Gaza. They tunneled into Israel and attacked an Israeli army outpost near the Gaza-Israel-Egypt border, killing two other soldiers in the assault. Israel immediately launched a military incursion into Gaza to rescue him, but failed.

“We should like to emphasize that the security of residents of the south and the release of Gilad Shalit are currently at the top (of) Israel’s priorities,” the statement said.

Israel denies reports of Hamas negotiations

Meanwhile, rockets were fired into Israel on Friday, causing no damage or injuries, and Israeli warplanes struck the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis, wounding two Popular Resistance Committee fighters.

Israel and Hamas had a six-month cease-fire mediated by Egypt starting last June, but it was repeatedly violated and after it ended Israel launched a three-week air, land and sea assault on Gaza aimed at stopping the rockets and weakening Hamas. Some 1,300 Palestinians were killed and thousands of buildings and homes destroyed. Thirteen Israelis, including three civilians, also died.

The new prospective accord, again being mediated by Egypt, is aimed at rebuilding Gaza after the war and involves both reconstruction and reconciliation between Hamas and the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, according to Ismael Ridwan, a Hamas spokesman, who spoke by telephone after extensive talks between Egyptian and Hamas officials.

He said among the materials that would be allowed to flow into Gaza in the new arrangement were cement and steel, which Egypt would monitor. Those materials are desperately needed for rebuilding, but the agreement would not allow pipes, cables and chemicals that Israel fears could be used for bombs.

Israel wanted to include the release of Cpl. Gilad Shalit, seized and held by Hamas since the summer of 2006, but Hamas said that would happen only in a separate, if linked, deal that frees hundreds of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

The director of Hamas’s political bureau in Syria, Khaled Meshal, said that there was no agreement about Corporal Shalit and that Israel was trying to link his release with opening the border crossings into Gaza.

“We are opposed to that, and we have made that clear to the Egyptian authorities,” Mr. Meshal said in an interview on Libyan television. He was in Tripoli to thank the Libyan leader, Muammar el-Qaddafi, for his support of Hamas during the Gaza conflict.

Mr. Meshal’s deputy, Moussa Abu Marzouk, told the Egyptian state news agency late Thursday that an 18-month truce with Israel had been agreed on and that it would include opening the crossings into Gaza from Israel and would be announced within two days.

But the senior Israeli official, who plays a key role in such negotiations and speaks only on condition of anonymity, said that all of this was premature because Israel’s elections last Tuesday put off any serious consideration of Hamas’s offer and that consultations would not start again until next week.

“We are only allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza, and that has not changed,” the Israeli official said. “Egypt has not yet come to us with the details of what it discussed with Hamas.” Amos Gilad, Israel’s negotiator with Egypt on the truce, is to head back to Cairo at the start of the coming week.

One big concern of Israel’s is guarantees that Hamas is not rearming through smuggling tunnels from Egypt or on the international arms market; Israeli officials will be looking for evidence in the new deal that such re-supplies have been stopped.

Hamas Sees Cease-Fire Within Days; Israel Demurs – NYTimes.com

The strikes targeted “open areas” near the town of Rafah and tunnels along the border with Egypt, residents said.

An Israeli military spokesman confirmed that the “Israeli air force intervened in the Gaza Strip,” late on Friday.

“Our planes attacked four tunnels that were dug under the border with Egypt and used for weapons smuggling,” the spokesman told AFP news agency.

“An arms depot was also targeted and the explosives that were stocked there exploded,” he said.

The raids came hours after Palestinian fighters fired two rockets at southern Israel without causing damage or victims, according to a military spokesman.

Shalit talks fail

The strikes also came after reports that indirect talks between Israel and Hamas over a prisoner swap to free Gilad Shalit, a captured Israeli soldier, failed.

Shalit was captured by Gaza groups in a 2006 cross-border raid.

Osama al-Muzaini, a Hamas official who is involved in the negotiations, said on Friday that the talks had shown little progress and that any claims by Israel that progress had been made were “election-motivated”.

“There has been no progress in the [Shalit] file for several months and that is because [Israel] remained unwilling to pay the price,” he told Reuters news agency.

Muzini was responding to a report published on the website of Israel’s Haaretz newspaper quoting unnamed Israeli officials as saying significant progress had been made in truce talks and Shalif’s freedom.

Muzaini did not mention where the talks had been held or who led the mediation.

Hamas has demanded the release of 1,400 prisoners in exchange for Shalit.

Muzaini said Israel had only agreed to 71 names from the list of 450 long-serving prisoners Hamas had proposed more than a year ago.

Al Jazeera English – Middle East – Israeli air strikes hit Gaza

There were no reports of injuries from the predawn Israeli strike in the town of Rafah, along Gaza’s border with Egypt. Witnesses and Hamas Islamists said a metal foundry was damaged.

Moments earlier, a militant group with links to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement claimed responsibility for firing a rocket at southern Israel late on Wednesday.

The rocket was the first fired from Gaza since Israel and Hamas called separate ceasefires ending a 22-day Israeli offensive on Jan. 18.

It caused no casualties, but Israeli leaders facing a Feb. 10 election in a campaign focussed on security concerns, have vowed to respond to rocket salvoes its offensive in Gaza had aimed to curtail.

Israel has said it will hold Gaza’s Hamas rulers responsible for all attacks launched from the coastal territory, and had warned of a stronger response to the killing of a soldier on Tuesday in an explosion by a Gaza border fence.

“Israel will respond very severely,” an Israeli security source said on Wednesday, and added, “we haven’t seen it all,” referring to the Israeli air strikes carried out earlier in the day on tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border.

“We will remain ready, with our finger on the trigger around the clock,” Benjamin Ben-Eliezer of Israel’s decision-making security cabinet said in remarks televised on Wednesday.

Hamas defended Tuesday’s bombing, citing the killing of two Palestinians by Israel last week. Israeli forces killed one Palestinian, identified by Gaza medical workers as a farmer after the bombing and later wounded a militant on a motorcycle.

VIOLENCE CLOUDS U.S. ENVOY VISIT

The violence clouded a visit by U.S. President Barack Obama’s Middle East envoy, former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, who said in Jerusalem on Wednesday it was “of critical importance that the ceasefire be extended and consolidated” with respect to Israel and Gaza.

Mitchell met Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defence Minister Ehud Barak on Wednesday and will meet Abbas on Thursday.

Western diplomats said Mitchell would not meet Hamas, a group shunned by the U.S. and Europe for it refusal to recognise Israel.

Mitchell said on Wednesday any durable truce between Israel and Hamas must end smuggling into Gaza and reopen border crossings controlled by Israel to relieve its economic blockade of the enclave where half the 1.5 million people depend on food aid.

He cited a U.S.-brokered 2005 agreement calling for forces loyal to Abbas to be deployed in Gaza. Hamas seized Gaza from Abbas’s forces in 2007, a year after the Islamists won a parliamentary election.

“President Obama has said the United States is committed to Israel’s security and to its right to defend itself against legitimate threats,” Mitchell said.

“The president has also said the United States will sustain an active commitment toward reaching the goal of two states living side by side in peace and security,” he added.

Olmert told Mitchell Israel would object to reopening any crossings with Gaza save to permit the flow of vital aid to the territory, until an Israeli soldier captured in 2006 was freed, an Israeli official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“We don’t intend to open the crossings before Gilad Shalit returns home,” Ben-Eliezer, the Israeli cabinet minister said, referring to the soldier seized by Gaza militants in a cross-border raid.

Israeli leaders fear Hamas could rebuild tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border to replenish an arsenal of rockets used in attacks on its southern communities that disrupt life for tens of thousands of citizens.

Some 1,300 Palestinians, including at least 700 civilians, were killed in the offensive, the Hamas-run Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip said. Israel put its death toll in the war at 10 soldiers and three civilians.

Israel strikes in Gaza as Obama envoy holds talks | Reuters

Its fighters launched dozens of Katyusha rockets and mortars at Israel and seized two more soldiers and killed eight others in cross-border raids.

It was seen as a dramatic gesture of solidarity with the Palestinians, but Israel’s response was far more dramatic and devastating to Lebanon.

Hezbollah said it wanted to exchange the two soldiers for thousands of Palestinians held in Israeli detention.

What it got was a 34-day onslaught from the Israeli military, costing more than 1,000 lives, mostly Lebanese civilians.

About 160 Israelis were killed, mostly soldiers, in fighting and rocket fire from Hezbollah. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were displaced on either side.

Events in Lebanon during the summer of 2006 ended up completely overshadowing what had been going on in Gaza.

Intense speculation

We are now nearly two weeks into Israel’s campaign to hit the Hamas militant movement in Gaza, an attempt to reduce rocket fire by Palestinian militants.

The news of rockets being fired from Lebanon will have raised alarm of a possible serious escalation in this bloody New Year period.

Intense speculation has focused on whether or not Hezbollah was responsible for Thursday’s rocket fire or whether it was Palestinian militant groups in exile in refugee camps in Lebanon.

Most analysts have concluded it is unlikely to be Hezbollah – despite recent fiery rhetoric from the group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah about the possibility of renewed conflict with Israel.

For a start, there has been no Hezbollah claim of responsibility, which is not the group’s usual style.

It has a reputation, even among Israelis, for being the most credible conveyor of information about its activities – when it chooses to convey such information.

Political timing

There is also the question of the scale of the attack – so far it is much smaller than in July 2006, and it is widely thought that Hezbollah would be capable of a much heavier blow if it had wanted.

The rockets seem to be short-range, and probably were fired from south of the Litani river, which is under control of the Unifil peacekeeping force and the Lebanese regular army.

It has been like this since the 2006 ceasefire which determined an end to all armed activity by militants between the Litani and the Israeli border.

It is widely assumed that Hezbollah still operates under cover in this area, but it is doubtful at this time that they would attempt such a blatant challenge to UN authority.

This is because the group is now part of the Lebanese government – with a power of veto on legislation – so it would be unlikely to want to jeopardise that position.

Another question regarding such attacks is whether Hezbollah somehow assisted, as they are launched from an area where – by reputation – not a leaf can move without its people knowing about it.

If so, the latest attack may be a way for Hezbollah to show solidarity with Gaza without provoking a massive Israeli retaliation.

After all, last year Israeli officials threatened that any attack from Hezbollah would trigger that would a retaliation against all of Lebanon that would make 2006 seem mild.

Difficult terrain

So who would attack Israel like this? Lebanon plays host to 400,000 Palestinian refugees, a reservoir of anger and militancy fuelled by 60 years of exile from what they consider as their land.

There are large refugee camps around Tyre and Sidon in southern Lebanon and militant groups have been known to launch rockets at Israel.

The last occasion of rocket fire was in January 2008, which was linked to the visit of US President George W Bush to Israel.

Hezbollah denied responsibility for that attack and the Israeli military blamed an unnamed Palestinian organisation.

But the incident showed the Unifil/Lebanese army regime was not in total control south of the Litani – notoriously difficult terrain to secure completely, as the Israeli army found to its cost during its long occupation of the area.

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Who is behind the Lebanon rockets?

“We hope… they will all be killed… because this is what they deserve,” an unnamed settler told Army Radio.

The comments came amid rioting in which Muslim graves were desecrated after the army removed an illegal outpost near Hebron in the West Bank on Saturday.

Outgoing PM Ehud Olmert said those behind the comments “belonged in jail”.

Outposts are informal settlements in the occupied West Bank which are illegal under Israeli law (whereas most settlements are authorised by Israel but viewed as illegal under international law).

Reports of violence – against both Palestinians and Israeli security forces – by the right-wing activist groups often involved in establishing the outposts have increased in recent months, particularly during the Palestinian olive harvest.

‘Verbal violence’

Israeli authorities said several settlers were arrested during Saturday night’s violence in Hebron, during which Israeli media reported some 80 Palestinian cars were vandalised.

“We hope they will be defeated by their enemies, that they will all be [kidnapped like Israeli soldier] Gilad Shalit, that they will all be killed and all slaughtered because this is what they deserve,” the unnamed settler said on Israel Radio.

On Sunday, outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said: “Whoever speaks out against Israeli Defence Forces soldiers belongs in jail and in judicial proceedings. We will show no tolerance towards such expressions and actions. We are sick of this verbal violence which either leads to, or affects, other violence.”

In a letter to a left-wing MP which was quoted in Israeli newspapers, a senior aide to Attorney General Menachem Mazuz said the settlers had “crossed a red line”.

The statements “were exceptional in their gravity, and therefore we decided to deviate from our usual policy and order police to open a criminal investigation against those who made them,” the letter said.

The Yesha Council, which represents some 450,000 settlers who live in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, condemned what it described as “extremely grave slander” by “hooligans”, but also protested against the removal of the outpost.

BBC NEWS