JERUSALEM — Israel on Wednesday resisted international calls to halt its airstrikes on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, saying it would keep up pressure on the militant Palestinian group while weighing proposals for a durable cease-fire.
As Hamas hurled more than 70 rockets across the border, Israeli warplanes pounded the densely populated coastal enclave for a fifth day, killing two doctors next to their ambulance. Nine other Palestinians died Wednesday, raising the number killed in the offensive to 397.
European, U.S. and Arab leaders have been pressing for a truce, concerned about a United Nations estimate that women and children account for at least one-fifth of Gaza's dead. On Sunday, Hamas' top political leader had floated the idea of a cease-fire.
But after a divisive debate late Tuesday, Israel's leadership backed away from hints of support for a truce proposal by France and pressed ahead with the airstrikes.
With troops and tanks massed along the Gaza border for a possible ground invasion, Israel's government authorized the mobilization of 2,500 army reservists to expand an earlier call-up of 6,500 soldiers.
Undeterred by waves of punishing attacks on its arsenal, command posts, rocket-launch sites, tunnels and weapons labs, Hamas fired deep into Israel on Wednesday, bringing daily life to a near-standstill for about half a million people in the southern part of the country.
Three Israeli civilians and a soldier have been killed by rocket fire since Saturday; no serious casualties were reported Wednesday.
Hamas, which calls for destruction of the Jewish state, has intensified its rocket fire since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. In mid-2007, the Islamic group seized control of the impoverished territory from the secular Fatah movement with which it had shared power in a government elected the previous year.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told a meeting of his security advisors that the French proposal lacked guarantees to ensure that Hamas would stop firing rockets and would be prevented from smuggling more weapons into Gaza through tunnels from Egypt.
"If conditions ripen and provide a diplomatic solution for ensuring a much better security reality in the south, we will consider it," Olmert said, according to Israel's Ynet news website. "But we are not there yet."
