GAZA CITY — Militants in the Gaza Strip fired three rockets into Israel and an Israeli helicopter fired at least two missiles into a building in northwest Gaza on Sunday as speculation continued about a possible cease-fire with Israel.
There were no reports of casualties from the incidents.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, whose Fatah movement was swept out of control of the government by the Islamic militant group Hamas this year, met with Hamas-appointed Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh on Saturday in Gaza City, along with representatives from Islamic Jihad and other militant groups.
Abbas proposed that the militias end their cross-border rocket attacks in exchange for a pledge by Israel to end artillery shelling and tank incursions into the Gaza Strip, officials said. But it's unclear whether any agreement was reached.
Former Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath, a high-ranking Fatah official, told reporters that all factions agreed to the proposal in principle -- a contention quickly denied by several factions.
"The idea was raised, but there wasn't an agreement," said Abu Thaer, a spokesman for the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.
Still representatives from several Palestinian armed groups said they had no objection to the concept of a cease-fire, raising the prospect that Hamas might pursue an independent deal, separate from Israel's conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The recent violence in both places was touched off by the abduction of Israeli soldiers, one near Gaza and two during a Hezbollah raid into Israel that also left eight Israeli soldiers dead.
"I'm against linking the fate of the soldier in Gaza with the fate of the two soldiers in Lebanon," said Abu Thaer, who said Gaza militants could never hold out against a sustained Israeli assault like Hezbollah can. "The resources of the resistance in Palestine are much more limited."
The agreement, as discussed during the Saturday meeting, would probably be acceptable to many Palestinian militant factions since it deals strictly with an end to the back-and-forth attacks while not touching on the fate of Cpl. Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier taken hostage June 25.
The raid that captured Shalit was carried out by the Popular Revolutionary Committees, the Izzidin al-Qassam Brigade and a previously unknown group calling itself the Army of Islam. Although the Qassam Brigade is the military wing of Hamas, it doesn't answer to local political leaders such as Haniyeh.
