Israel orders military to reduce operations in Gaza

Lull in Palestinian rocket fire raises possibility of truce

A Palestinian rode his bicycle past a building damaged recently in an airstrike at the Rafah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel denied talk of a cease-fire. (Eyad Baba/Associated Press)

JERUSALEM - Israel's prime minister ordered the army to scale back operations in Gaza yesterday after a sharp drop in Palestinian rocket fire, raising the possibility of a wider truce that would ease the path for peace talks.

Ehud Olmert denied talk of a cease-fire with Gaza's Hamas rulers, but said there was no need to attack Gaza as long as calm prevailed.

Hamas said it was encouraged by the relative lull, citing it as evidence that attacks on Israel were paying off. The militant group wants an agreement that would include opening the Gaza Strip's shuttered borders.

Israel, concerned that calm could enable the militants to claim victory and rearm, said it reserves the right to strike at will.

The army said no rockets were fired yesterday, and Israel has not carried out any airstrikes or land raids in Gaza since Wednesday. Last week, militants fired an average of more than a dozen rockets a day, while the army struck hard in Gaza, leaving more than 120 Palestinians dead, according to Palestinian medical officials.

The past few days have seen no serious Israeli casualties from rocket fire, though Palestinian militants killed two Israeli soldiers Thursday in a roadside bombing along the Gaza border. Later that day, a Palestinian fired on students at a Jewish seminary in Jerusalem, killing eight before he was shot dead.

The increase in violence in the past two weeks had raised serious doubts about President Bush's goal of forging a peace deal by year's end.

Hamas, which violently took control of the Gaza Strip in June, has proven itself capable of playing the role of spoiler.

Vice President Dick Cheney will travel to the region on Sunday to meet with Mideast leaders on "issues of mutual interest," the White House said yesterday. Besides Israel and the West Bank, Cheney will travel to Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.

Egypt has been trying to mediate a truce between Israel and Hamas, and officials from the warring sides have traveled to Egypt in recent days to discuss the matter.

Yesterday, Olmert reiterated that there was no need for an official truce because Israel has no reason to attack Gaza when there is no rocket fire. In the meantime, he said "the army has complete freedom of action in Gaza without restrictions and according to its needs."

"There is no agreement. There are no negotiations, not directly and not indirectly," Olmert said. "We don't know if Egypt reached any agreement with Hamas. In any case, it hasn't received a mandate from us to do so."

Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister, said he appreciated the Egyptian effort and was encouraged by Israel's tacit willingness to reach a calm. Hamas has been pushing for a wider truce deal that would include an end to the international blockade imposed on Gaza after the militant group took power.

"We see the change in the Israeli position - the halt to attacks on Gaza - as an admission of failure. It reinforces the theory of balance of deterrence that the resistance has established," he said.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak said it was too early to call the Israeli offensive over.

"Whoever thinks that we have finished the story with Gaza already and there is calm, I want to correct them - we haven't finished anything there yet," he said. "This fighting is continuous and it will continue. Sometimes it will increase and decrease."

Hamas officials said their leaders will talk to Egypt in the next day or two to continue the efforts to work out a deal.

Hossam Zaki, an Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman, told the TV station Al-Jazeera that Egypt was holding talks with the sides and that "there is interest from both parties in a period of calm."