Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert opted on Wednesday for limited military action in Gaza after Hamas's armed wing fired rockets into Israel and declared a ceasefire in the territory dead, political sources said.
Ruling out a ground offensive, Olmert decided in talks with security chiefs to step up "targeted attacks" against Palestinian rocket-launching crews but refrain from trying to kill senior militants or political leaders, the sources said.
"Israel will not hesitate to take harsh measures against those who try to harm its sovereignty by firing rockets into our territory, attempting attacks on soldiers and other means," Olmert's office said in a statement after the security session.
Hamas's Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades launched eight rockets at Israel from Gaza on Tuesday in what the group said was retaliation for Israel's killing of nine Palestinians in raids against militants in the occupied West Bank.
The military said two of the rockets landed in Israel on Tuesday, its 59th Independence Day, causing minor damage but no casualties. It was the first such attack since Hamas and Israeli leaders agreed to a Gaza ceasefire last November.
The Israeli military recently completed a training programme to ready ground forces for an offensive in the territory should the government order it, Israeli security sources said.
But one political source said Olmert, his popularity flagging since last year's inconclusive Lebanon war, was not interested in a massive assault at this time. An official inquiry into the 34-day conflict with Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrillas and the military's preparedness for the war will release interim findings on Monday, a panel spokesman said.
The report will cover the period between Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 after a 22-year occupation of the south until mid-July last year, to include "the period in which decisions were made to go to war", the statement said. Israel launched its offensive on July 12, 2006.
CEASEFIRE: In Gaza, a Palestinian official said an Egyptian security team held separate meetings with Hamas and the Islamic Jihad group and stressed the need to restore calm to avoid giving Israel a pretext to mount a ground offensive.
The team headed by Major-General Burhan Hammad plays a mediating role in the enclave. It then went to Israel "to try to convince the Israelis to stop the military campaigns in exchange for a halt to rocket fire", a Palestinian official told Reuters.
On Tuesday, after the rocket strikes, Abu Abaida, a spokesman for the Qassam Brigades, said: "There is no calm between us and the occupation. The occupation ended the calm." The Hamas-led Palestinian government, however, said it was interested in maintaining the ceasefire, from which Israeli forces withdrew in 2005, while keeping a tight encirclement.
The truce does not cover the West Bank, where the Israeli military mounts frequent raids against Palestinian militant groups it says are constantly planning attacks inside Israel.