World Feb. 03, 2009 - 03:40AM JST ( 11 )

GAZA CITY —

Israel carried out a deadly air raid in Gaza on Monday after warning of a harsh response to renewed fire from the enclave, where the Hamas rulers spoke out in favor of a conditional one-year truce.

One Palestinian was killed and four others wounded in the strike on a vehicle carrying militants in the southern town of Rafah, medical sources and witnesses said.

An Israeli army spokesman said the raid targeted militants who had fired several mortar rounds into southern Israel without causing casualties.

The dead man was identified as Ayman Abu Jazar of the Popular Resistance Committees, a small Palestinian armed group.

The action came after warplanes launched air strikes across Gaza late on Sunday in response to militant rocket fire which shook the Jan 18 ceasefire that ended Israel’s 22-day war on the coastal strip.

Sunday’s strikes hit a Hamas police station and tunnels used for smuggling weapons and goods from Egypt into the Gaza Strip, which is reeling under a punishing Israel blockade.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed on Sunday to deal “a severe and disproportionate Israeli response” to new rocket fire.

But the YNet News website quoted Defense Minister Ehud Barak as saying Israel had “no intention of embarking on Operation Cast Lead number two. We said there would be a response and we responded.”

Operation Cast Lead left more than 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead.

Since the offensive ended last month, more than 15 rockets have been fired from Gaza, wounding one civilian and two soldiers, Israel said.

Barak said that although most of the rockets were not fired by Hamas, the Islamist movement which has controlled Gaza since June 2007 bore responsibility for the attacks.

“We know that most of the fire was not carried out by Hamas but by other small organizations, but Hamas is responsible. Hamas must act to stop this.

“We need calm in the south, and that is the test… If there is no calm we will have to act again,” Barak warned on public radio.

The latest violence comes just over a week before Israelis go to the polls in a Feb 10 election expected to return the right-wing opposition to power.

Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers shot dead a Palestinian gunman who opened fire on an army patrol in the south of the occupied West Bank, rescue services said.

The flare-up came as Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak held talks with Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas amid efforts by Cairo to broker a lasting truce in and around Gaza.

The Islamist group said it favors a one-year truce on condition that the impoverished territory’s crossings are opened to the outside world.

“We agree in principle with a one-year truce,” spokesman Fawzi Barhum said, but added that Hamas has not ruled out an 18-month truce proposed by the Egyptian mediators.

“Whether one year or a year and a half, it must be linked to the opening of all crossing points, including (the) Rafah (crossing on the Egyptian border), and the lifting of the (Israeli) blockade,” he said.

The ceasefire talks have been complicated by Palestinian factional feuding.

Abbas accused Hamas—which kicked his forces out of Gaza in June 2007—of putting Palestinian lives and their hopes for statehood at risk.

He also accused the Islamists of trying to smash the Palestine Liberation Organization and said he rejected talks with any group which did not recognize the PLO.

Khaled Meshaal, who heads Hamas’s Damascus-based exiled political leadership, said last week that the PLO had become obsolete and called for “a new national authority.”

His comments were not supported by other militant groups allied with Hamas, who said the PLO should be reformed rather than replaced.

Meshaal ruled out any permanent ceasefire until Israel ends the crippling blockade it imposed on Gaza after Hamas seized power.

But an Israeli official said the government “is not ready to adhere to any agreement that has a time limit. We want a deal that will be valid for as long as the sides respect it.”

In Tehran, meanwhile, Meshaal urged Iranian students to join the Islamist movement.

“God willing we will liberate Al-Quds (Jerusalem) together and pray together there,” he said at the University of Tehran on the third day of a visit to Iran.

Wire reports