Israel carried out air strikes and
Palestinians launched mortar bomb attacks on Monday despite a ceasefire in the
Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, but Israel's defence minister said a wider offensive
was not imminent, Reuters reported.
Responding to Egyptian efforts to broker a long-term truce, a Hamas spokesman
said it would be prepared to halt hostilities for a year if a deal could be
reached on lifting Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip and reopening border
crossings.
An Israeli aircraft attacked a car in the southern Gaza town of Rafah on the Egyptian border, killing one militant and wounding three other gunmen,
medical officials said, identifying them as members of the Popular Resistance
Committees.
The Israeli military said it targeted a squad that fired two mortar bombs into
southern Israel. A Popular Resistance Committees spokesman said the dead gunman
was a rocket-launching crew leader.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert pledged on Sunday a "disproportionate"
military response to continuing rocket salvoes that Palestinian militants have
described as payback for fresh Israeli attacks.
But his defence minister, Ehud Barak, signalled Israel would stop short of
all-out war.
"It is not our intention to have an Operation Cast Lead 2," he said
in an interview with the YNet news Web site. Israel's 22-day offensive in Gaza before a ceasefire last month had been known as "Operation Cast Lead".
"We said there would be a response and there was a response last
night," Barak said about Sunday's air strikes.
Barak's comments clashed with statements later on Monday by Foreign Minister
Tzipi Livni.
"We will continue to strike at Hamas. And our strategic goal cannot be to
accept their existence," Livni said in speech.
"If a deterrence has not been achieved at the end of the campaign, we will
continue to do so until they get the message. We will respond to every attack,
every shooting at Israel, every attack on Israeli sovereignty and continue to
take action if there is a need," she said.
Both Barak, head of the centre-left Labour Party, and Livni, chairman of the
ruling, centrist Kadima party, are candidates for prime minister in Israel's Feb. 10 election. Opinion polls forecast victory for right-winger Benjamin
Netanyahu of Likud.
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