Israel’s prime minister says the five-month truce with Hamas in the Gaza Strip has been “shattered” following 13 days of tit-for-tat attacks.
Ehud Olmert told an Israeli cabinet meeting on Sunday that he had ordered security chiefs to draw up plans to end rocket and mortar attacks on southern Israel, news agency AFP reported.
Olmert made the remarks shortly after four Palestinian fighters from the Popular Resistance Committees were killed in an Israeli air attack in northern Gaza.

Jerusalem Israeli tanks entered the southern Gaza Strip yesterday, drawing mortar fire from Palestinian militants and undermining a tenuous truce. The tanks, backed by a bulldozer, drove 500 metres into the strip and levelled earth near Rafah, Gaza’s southeastern border crossing with Egypt. Israel said that the operation was mounted to uncover explosives, while the Palestinians accused Israel of trying to increase violence. The latest fighting began two weeks ago and there is now a near-daily cycle of mortar attacks on southern Israeli towns and Israeli airstrikes in Gaza. At …

An Israeli air strike killed four militants in the Gaza Strip on Sunday and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he had commissioned a plan for military action in the Hamas-run territory should rocket attacks on Israel persist. “I ordered security chiefs to present their proposals to me as soon as possible so that an orderly plan of action could, if necessary, be brought to the decision-makers in the government for approval,” Olmert told his cabinet, in broadcast remarks.

The UN in the Gaza Strip says it will run out of food aid in two days unless Israel’s blockade – which it describes as “shameful and unacceptable” – eases.
The UN refugee agency Unrwa, which distributes food to half of Gaza’s 1,5m people, called the blockade “a physical as well as a mental punishment”.
Israel is now allowing a limited amount of fuel across the border, but it is still blocking food deliveries.
It says it tightened sanctions because of rocket attacks by militants.
The Islamist group Hamas, which controls Gaza, said …

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Israeli aircraft fired missiles at militants in the northern Gaza Strip on Friday and Palestinians sent rocket barrages flying into Israel, officials said, as newly resumed violence threatened to bury a five-month-old truce.
The renewed rocket fire from Gaza prompted Israel to seal its crossings with the territory, halting shipments of food aid and fuel.

TEL AVIV — Palestinian militants unleashed a barrage of missiles at Israeli towns on Wednesday in revenge for a military incursion into the Gaza Strip that killed at least six, marking the first serious test of a 4 ½ month calm between Hamas and Israel.
Despite the sudden outburst, Israel and Hamas signaled Wednesday they prefer to hold to an Egyptian ceasefire, brokered this summer that halted daily cross-border attacks in Israel from Gaza, the coastal strip of 1.5 million Palestinians controlled by the Islamist group Hamas.

HEBRON, West Bank (Reuters) – Jewish settlers say they are ready to fight U.S.-trained, Palestinian security forces who are being sent to the tense West Bank city of Hebron.
Fear of a showdown if the armed Palestinians move into the center, where a hard core of sometimes violent settlers lives, makes the deployment the biggest test yet for a U.S. plan to build up the force, seen as vital in persuading Israel it can end its occupation without compromising its own security.

GAZA — The grooms were resplendent in white shirts while the brides all wore black. At a sports stadium one recent October evening, thousands of Palestinians — 300 newly married couples along with relatives and friends — gathered for a mass wedding celebration, the 10th here this year courtesy of Hamas.

The Qassam rocket is a simple steel rocket filled with explosives, produced by Hamas. Three models have been used. They are all free-flying artillery rockets lacking any guidance system.
Qassams are sometimes referred to as “homemade” or “primitive”, but require “both expertise and dedicated locations to manufacture”.

Palestinian terrorists on Thursday morning violated the fragile truce with Israel once more, firing a Kassam rocket from the Gaza Strip at the western Negev town of Sderot.
Following the attack, Defense Minister Ehud Barak ordered the closure of crossings for the transferal of goods between Israel and Gaza.