Israel rebuffs calls for 48-hour truce in Gaza
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says a French proposal lacks guarantees to halt Hamas rocket attacks. As they prepare for a land invasion, officials say they are open to alternatives.
Reporting from Jerusalem — Israel today rebuffed international pressure for a 48-hour halt in its aerial bombing assault on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, saying it would keep up pressure on the militant Palestinian group while considering cease-fire proposals.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told a meeting of his security advisors that a French cease-fire proposal lacked guarantees to ensure that Hamas would stop firing rockets into southern Israel and would be unable to smuggle more weapons into Gaza.
"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 agency. "But we are not there yet."
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner had proposed a two-day halt in the fighting to allow delivery of humanitarian relief to the besieged coastal strip and give time for international mediators to work out a long-term truce.
Israeli officials made it clear they had not rejected the French plan outright and were open to amendments and alternatives being put forward by Turkey, Egypt and other parties.
But the officials said that Israel would continue to prepare for a possible land invasion of Gaza, escalating the air assault begun Saturday. With troops and tanks massed along the Gaza border, the government today approved the mobilization of 2,500 army reservists, expanding an earlier call-up of 6,500 soldiers.
Hamas fired more than two dozen rockets and mortar shells today, including five that hit in and around the southern city of Beersheba, 28 miles from Gaza. One hit an empty school, where classes had been canceled following a rocket attack the previous day. No serious casualties were reported.
Israeli warplanes, meanwhile, demolished smuggling tunnels that are the lifeline of the Hamas regime in Gaza. Palestinian officials said the airstrikes killed at least six people today, bringing Gaza's five-day death toll to 390. The United Nations estimates about one-fourth of the dead in Gaza are civilians.
Four Israelis have been killed by rocket fire, including three civilians.
President Bush called Olmert today to discuss ways of ending the violence and to again express his concern about civilian casualties, said Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the White House.
The president, who is vacationing at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, wants a "durable, sustainable cease-fire," that will halt the "rockets being fired on the innocent people of Israel," Johndroe told reporters.
"The onus is on Hamas to act," Johndroe said.
Johndroe said Bush and Olmert also discussed humanitarian aid for the Palestinians. Olmert reassured Bush that Israel was also concerned about avoiding civilian casualties, he said.
boudreaux@latimes.com
Times staff writer Michael Muskal in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
