Israel retaliation likely as Obama envoy holds talks

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090128/ts_nm/us_palestinians_israel

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel warned on Wednesday of further violent retaliation for the killing of a soldier by Gaza militants, an Israeli security source said.

"Israel will respond very severely," the source said. The Israeli air force carried out strikes during the night but "we haven't seen it all."

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was quoted as telling senior officials on Tuesday evening that Israel's response would be "severe and disproportionate."

These warnings raised the prospect of further bloodshed in Gaza as President Barack Obama's visiting Middle East envoy, former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, called for the current ceasefire to be extended.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak said he had canceled a trip to the United States "to closely follow these developments," adding that "the Israeli army is ready, as always."

Israel and the Gaza Strip's Hamas rulers ordered separate ceasefires on January 18, when Israel ended a devastating 22-day assault. But fresh violence now threatens the de facto truce.

A little-known Islamist group claimed Tuesday's bomb attack which blew up an Israeli patrol jeep, killing one soldier and injuring three. The Hamas group defended the strike, citing the killing of two Palestinians by Israel last week.

After the bombing, Israeli forces killed one Palestinian, identified by Gaza medical workers as a farmer. An Israeli air strike later seriously wounded a militant on a motorcycle.

Aircraft returned to southern Gaza overnight to bomb tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border which were targeted aggressively during the offensive, but are being quickly repaired.

Obama's peace envoy, former Senator George Mitchell, said it was "of critical importance that the ceasefire be extended and consolidated."

He met Olmert and other leaders in Jerusalem after talks in Cairo with Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak and was to hold talks on Thursday with Palestinian leaders, but not with Hamas.

Barak, in a statement, said he had stressed to Mitchell that Israel cannot accept any attack on its citizens and would act with determination against any attack by Hamas or its allies.

U.S. COMMITMENT TO TWO STATES

Mitchell said a durable truce must end smuggling into Gaza and reopen border crossings controlled by Israel, to relieve its economic blockade of the enclave where half the 1.5 million people depend on food aid.

He cited a U.S.-brokered 2005 agreement that calls for forces loyal to Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to be deployed in Gaza, from where they were driven out by Hamas militants in 2007.

Mitchell planned to see Abbas on Thursday but Western diplomats said he would not meet officials of Hamas, which is shunned by Israel and the West for refusing to recognize the Jewish state, renounce violence and accept interim peace deals.

Israeli leaders, running in a February 10 national election, fear Hamas could rebuild tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border to replenish an arsenal of rockets used in attacks on its southern communities before and during the Gaza war.

Some 1,300 Palestinians, including at least 700 civilians, were killed in the offensive, the Hamas-run Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip said. Israel, which said it launched its assaults to stop rocket salvoes, put its death toll in the war at 10 soldiers and three civilians.

"President Obama has said the United States is committed to Israel's security and to its right to defend itself against legitimate threats," Mitchell said in Jerusalem.

"The president has also said the United States will sustain an active commitment toward reaching the goal of two states living side by side in peace and security," he added.

Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, said in Israel the EU wanted Israeli authorities to increase the number of truckloads of aid entering the Gaza Strip from the current 130 a day to 400 a day.

In a report that coincided with the U.S. envoy's mission, Israel's Peace Now group said construction in Jewish settlements on occupied Arab land -- identified in Mitchell's report eight years ago as an obstacle to peace -- was stepped up last year.

According to Peace Now, 1,257 new structures were built in West Bank settlements in 2008, a 57 percent increase over 2007.

Palestinian peace negotiator Saeb Erekat said the settlements were a "virus" undermining peace and urged the Obama administration to press Israel to halt the expansion.

(Writing by Douglas Hamilton, editing by Myra MacDonald)