World Dec. 23, 2008 - 06:12AM JST ( 4 )

GAZA CITY —

Hamas agreed on Monday to hold fire against Israel for 24 hours, but warned it would resume suicide attacks if the Jewish state launched an offensive against its Gaza stronghold.

The Islamists and other armed factions in Gaza have accepted “a calm for a 24-hour period following Egyptian mediation in exchange for the delivery of aid from Egypt,” senior Hamas official Ayman Taha said.

Despite the brief ceasefire, Taha warned that Hamas would resume suicide attacks if Israel made good on its threats to unleash a major assault against the Gaza Strip, where the Islamists seized power in June 2007.

“It is our right as an occupied people to defend ourselves from the occupation by all means possible including suicide attacks,” he said. Hamas last carried out a suicide attack in Israel in January 2005.

Israel on Monday began a campaign to muster international support for any major offensive to try to halt rocket fire from the impoverished Palestinian territory.

Tensions have mounted since the expiry on Friday of a six-month truce between Israel and Hamas in and around Gaza.

In a letter to U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon, Israel’s envoy to the United Nations, Gabriela Shalev, said the government would respond to continuing rocket fire, foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, leader of the main governing Kadima party, has ordered Israeli ambassadors around the world to emphasise that Israel “will not hesitate to react militarily if necessary” to protect its citizens.

She is also due to meet foreign envoys to Israel and contact her counterparts abroad.

“We cannot accept a situation where Hamas continues its attacks on the citizens of Israel,” Livni said in a telephone call with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

The foreign ministry said in a statement she had been invited to visit Cairo on Thursday by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to discuss the situation.

Israel has threatened a major offensive against the impoverished territory that has been controlled by Hamas since June last year.

The two frontrunners in the race to become premier after a snap election in February—Livni and Benjamin Netanyahu of the right-wing Likud party—both vowed to oust the Islamist movement, sworn to the Jewish state’s destruction.

Violence in and around the enclave has escalated since Friday, when Hamas said it would not renew the truce.

Since then, the military has carried out several air strikes, killing one militant and wounding several Palestinians, and militants have launched several dozen rockets at Israel, wounding a handful of people.

Three rockets and one mortar round were fired into southern Israel on Monday, causing neither casualties nor damage, an Israeli military spokesman said.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) said in a statement it had carried out the attacks.

Despite the bellicose rhetoric, observers say Israel is wary of launching a major offensive less than two months before the general election for fear it would not be able to score a decisive victory against Hamas.

Defence Minister Ehud Barak, a former army chief, has made it clear he sees no reason to rush into a large-scale operation, dismissing calls for an offensive as “the babble of politicians who have never seen war in their lives.”

Israel responded to violence that erupted around Gaza in early November by tightening its blockade of the territory, completely sealing off access on several occasions.

The UN has suspended its food distribution and several bakeries have been forced to shut down because of flour shortages.

A convoy carrying a million dollars of Egyptian food and medical aid is expected to enter Gaza after Hamas declared the 24-hour truce.

An official in El-Arish, 45 kilometers from the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, said the aid had been waiting there since Sunday but had not been allowed in because of Palestinian rocket fire.

Meanwhile Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told Ismail Haniya, head of the Hamas administration in Gaza, by telephone that he would urge his Israeli counterpart Ehud Olmert during talks in Ankara to lift the blockade, a spokesman for the Islamist movement said.

Wire reports