Responding to Palestinian calls for a truce in Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert reiterated Wednesday that Israel would stop its attacks if rocket fire from the area at its southern towns and villages stopped too. ( dpa )
"If there is no Qassam fire at Israel, there will be no Israeli attack on Gaza. We don't rise in the morning and think how to attack Gaza. If they don't attack us, we won't attack them," Olmert said after meeting Hungarian President Laszlo Solyom.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had earlier called on Israel to accept a truce with the radical Islamic Hamas movement ruling Gaza, and told a joint news conference with Solyom that he would resume negotiations with Israel after calm returned to the Gaza Strip.
He had broken off the talks with Israel, after Israeli retaliatory military operations in the Gaza Strip against the ongoing, daily rocket attacks had left some 127 Palestinians dead over the past week.
"The negotiations should definitely resume but after there is calm," Abbas had told the news conference, adding Egypt was trying to convince Hamas to suspend the rocket attacks and broker a truce.