Olmert calls for response to rockets

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert instructed the army Wednesday to resume “pinpoint” attacks against militants firing rockets from the Gaza Strip, abandoning a policy of restraint in the face of repeated Palestinian violations of a month-old cease-fire.

But in a statement that appeared to rule out a large-scale return of ground troops to Gaza, Israel said it remained committed to the truce and would work with the Palestinian leadership “so that immediate steps are taken” to halt the rain of crude Kassam rockets.

The decision reflected conflicting pressures on Olmert. Four days earlier, with U.S. encouragement, he had opened negotiations with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and was worried that escalating violence could spoil the first joint effort in nearly two years to revive talks on a final peace settlement.

Yet with an average of two rockets falling each day in or near Israeli cities, he was facing rising criticism from Israeli citizens, defense officials and members of his Cabinet who demanded some form of retaliation.

Olmert acted after eight rockets landed in Israel on Tuesday, the most fired in one day since the truce was declared Nov. 26. One of the rockets wounded two 14-year-old boys in Sderot, the town on the Gaza border that has suffered most of the attacks.

“The defense establishment has been instructed to take pinpoint action against the rocket-launching cells,” the statement issued by Olmert’s office said after he met Wednesday with Defense Minister Amir Peretz and senior military officials.

“At the same time, Israel will continue to abide by the cease-fire,” the statement added.

Most of the rockets, including the one that wounded the two boys, have been fired by Islamic Jihad, a radical group backed by Iran that does not participate in Palestinian politics. In a statement Wednesday, the group said it would continue firing rockets in retaliation for attacks on its militants in the West Bank, where the truce is not in effect and where Israeli soldiers have killed 14 Palestinians in the last month.

Islamic Jihad fired a rocket into southern Israel shortly after Wednesday’s government announcement, causing no casualties.

The Israeli army was given a green light to conduct air or artillery strikes at rocket squads in Gaza before, during or immediately after a launch, officials said, but not to attack them with ground troops or resume so-called targeted killings of militants thought to have fired rockets.

“We will act only against active rocket launchers and only if they are not within the perimeter of what would be considered a civilian area,” government spokeswoman Miri Eisen said. “We are not going to target rocket-launching equipment sitting in a house.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said the policy reversal should not undermine the cease-fire. “As long as operations are prudent and pinpointed, there is no reason for things to degenerate,” she told reporters in Jerusalem.

Other Israeli officials said that such strikes were unlikely to halt the rocket attacks but were nonetheless necessary. “We have already tried every military trick in the book,” said Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, Israel’s infrastructure minister, acknowledging on Israel Radio that nothing had proved effective in protecting Sderot’s 25,000 people.

“We have tried everything, but we still have to respond,” he said. “We cannot allow an Israeli town to become a cemetery.”

The decision drew criticism from both Abbas’ Fatah party and Hamas, the more militant Islamic movement that leads the Palestinian government and is sworn to Israel’s destruction.

“We have asked all Palestinian factions to respect the truce, and Olmert must realize that violence begets violence and bullets beget bullets,” said Saeb Erekat, a senior aide to Abbas.

Nabil Amr, another Abbas aide, warned that a resumption of Israeli attacks in Gaza could “negatively affect” follow-up talks between the Palestinian leader and Olmert.

The two leaders had promised Saturday, at their first formal encounter, to hold more meetings, but Amr said none had been scheduled.

The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the military wing of Fatah, said it would stop observing the truce if Israeli attacks resumed.

Hamas called for support of the cease-fire.

“We believe this agreement is still alive and both sides should respect it,” said Ghazi Hamad, a spokesman for the Hamas-led government.

Abbas has come under criticism from Hamas for engaging in talks with Israel, which have focused so far on confidence-building measures rather than elements of a definitive peace deal.

A resumption of fighting in Gaza could undermine efforts by Egypt, other moderate Arab nations and the Bush administration to boost Abbas’ authority while weakening Hamas.

Egypt moved Wednesday to keep the Israeli-Palestinian talks on track. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, a frequent mediator between the two sides, received Abbas in Cairo and sent his foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, to meet in Jerusalem with Olmert.

Olmert was scheduled to meet with Mubarak in Egypt on Jan. 4.

Speaking to reporters in Cairo, Abbas said he proposed in his meeting with Mubarak that the United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia -- the so-called quartet of Middle East peace facilitators -- take part in further talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

He said such contacts should be “back-channel talks,” held out of the public spotlight, and aimed at reviving the substantive peace talks that broke down six years ago.

The late November cease-fire ended five months of fighting that followed a June attack by Hamas-affiliated gunmen on an Israeli army post just outside the Gaza Strip.

Two Israeli soldiers were killed and another was captured in that raid. Israel sent ground troops, artillery and aircraft to strike at the militants and their rocket squads.

But the incursions failed to stop the firing of homemade rockets from lightweight mobile launchers or win the release of the soldier, Gilad Shalit, whose fate is now tied to a prisoner swap Egypt is trying to arrange.

When Abbas persuaded Hamas and several other militant factions to agree to a truce, Olmert pulled Israeli forces out of Gaza.

Israel’s deputy defense minister, Ephraim Sneh, said Israel had learned after a month of restraint that it must combine military, economic and diplomatic pressures to end the violence.

He said it was essential to build on the concessions Olmert made to Abbas on Saturday, including the release of $100 million in taxes and duties Israel had withheld from the Palestinian Authority and the lifting of 27 Israeli checkpoints out of the hundreds that inhibit travel in the West Bank.

“Anyone who wants to tell the public the truth must say this clearly: There is no exclusively military solution to this problem,” Sneh said.

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boudreaux@latimes.com

Times special correspondent Maher Abukhater in Ramallah, West Bank, contributed to this report.