Israel pounds targets but hints at cease-fire

JERUSALEM —  After four days of airstrikes that have partly crippled Hamas, Israel signaled interest Tuesday in a proposed 48-hour suspension of its offensive in the Gaza Strip to test prospects for a full cease-fire with the militant Palestinian group.

The proposal, offered by France, came as Israeli troops and tanks were massed along the Gaza border for a possible ground invasion. Israel’s air force appeared to be running out of new targets and losing the advantage of surprise it had early in the offensive, which began Saturday.

Israeli aircraft continued to attack the coastal enclave Tuesday, pounding supply tunnels under Gaza’s border with Egypt, an empty Hamas government complex, several security installations and the home of a senior Hamas commander.

The four-day death toll rose to 384 Palestinians, including Lama Hamdan, 4, and her sister Haia, 11, who were riding a donkey cart Tuesday near a rocket-launching site targeted by Israel.

The United Nations said that the death toll included nearly 70 civilians, fueling diplomatic pressure on Israel to halt the offensive. Three Israeli civilians and a soldier have been killed by rocket fire since the offensive began.

Hamas fired 42 rockets and mortar shells at Israeli communities Tuesday, striking deeper than ever into the Jewish state but causing no serious casualties. Two rockets landed 28 miles from Gaza in the desert city of Beersheba, a range that makes 700,000 Israelis, a tenth of the country’s population, potential targets.

The open-ended offensive is the strongest attempt yet to break Hamas’ ability and will to stage rocket attacks, which have intensified since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.

Israeli officials say the airstrikes have destroyed one-third of Hamas’ estimated arsenal of 3,000 rockets and half its underground launch silos -- “an overwhelming blow, albeit far from critical,” said Yair Naveh, a former commander of Israeli forces in the West Bank.

He said the offensive was nearing a decisive point: Israeli leaders must either escalate the fight with a ground invasion or arrange a cease-fire.

Israeli officials said they were weighing both courses of action. But the prospect of a cease-fire appeared to dominate a series of high-level meetings Tuesday in Jerusalem, prodded by initiatives from Europe, Egypt and Turkey and by an indirect show of interest from Hamas.

The idea of a truce was floated Sunday by Khaled Meshaal, Hamas’ top political leader, based in Syria, during a telephone call to Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, who heads the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

Senegal’s Foreign Ministry announced that Hamas was interested in a cease-fire if it would include a lifting of Israel’s blockade of Gaza, which has severely restricted the flow of goods across the border.

Sentiment for a cease-fire has been growing in Israel among politicians and commentators on the left who supported the air attack but worry that a ground offensive would bog down the army in a costly, unwinnable guerrilla war.

“Israel must constantly check to see when its force has crossed the line of legitimate and effective response,” celebrated author David Grossman wrote Tuesday on the front page of Haaretz, advocating a cease-fire.

“Is it possible,” he added, “or are we too imprisoned in the familiar ceremony of war?”

France, which holds the presidency of the European Union until Thursday, proposed a 48-hour truce. Israel would halt attacks and lift the blockade to let in humanitarian relief, testing Hamas’ willingness to stop the rockets.

If calm prevailed for 48 hours, talks on a long-term cease-fire would begin. The quartet of Middle East peace brokers -- the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations -- called Tuesday for such an accord, and Turkey and Egypt have offered to mediate.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner twice telephoned Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak to discuss France’s proposal. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni was to meet in Paris on Thursday with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, his office said.

Livni, Barak and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert have refrained from comment on the proposal and kept up their bellicose rhetoric. Israeli media quoted Olmert as saying Tuesday that the aerial phase of the Gaza offensive is just “the first of several” planned.

His spokesman, Mark Regev, said Israel was wary of any proposal “that would give Hamas a respite allowing it to regroup and rearm,” as did an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire that took effect in June and broke down last month.

But two other Cabinet officials confirmed Israel’s interest in a cease-fire.

“It could be that we would say, ‘OK, all right, for humanitarian needs only,’ ” and we would allow this,” Welfare Minister Isaac Herzog told Israel’s Army Radio. “Of course this also depends on the other side, where it wants to take this confrontation.”

He said Israel could continue to prepare for a ground offensive in Gaza as it tested a cease-fire.

Hamas officials in Gaza have also downplayed interest in a truce but have not ruled one out.

Some in Gaza believe Hamas wants Israeli soldiers to enter the strip. The group has had 18 months to smuggle weapons through tunnels from Egypt since it seized control of Gaza from Fatah, a more moderate Palestinian group with which it had co-governed for just more than a year.

Israel’s military is aware of the risks involved in a large-scale reoccupation of Gaza but nonetheless has massed ground forces inside a two-mile war cordon along the border.

Awaiting them is a Hamas paramilitary force widely estimated to number 15,000 fighters. Israeli newspapers Tuesday reported estimates that few of these men had been killed by the bombing.

“Within the security establishment, there is no sense that Hamas has sustained a long-term strategic blow,” Jerusalem Post Editor David Horovitz wrote.

Instead, the most numerous bombing victims appear to have been uniformed policemen killed when their stations and training centers were flattened. Israel says the police are fair game because they are armed members of Hamas’ security structure and some take part in rocket launchings.

But Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said nearly all the policemen killed had been responsible for enforcing law and order, not fighting Israel. “Many of them were not even Hamas members,” he said.

Though the initial shock of the campaign appears to have hurt Hamas’ communications and command-and-control systems, Israeli analysts say it probably can recover.

Advocates of a ground offensive say Hamas’ remaining communications facilities, weapons factories, arms depots and missile silos are close to civilian homes and should not be bombed from the air.

Those opposing such an operation say it would cause even more civilian casualties, bringing greater international pressure to cease hostilities.

As Israel weighed its options, the military allowed 100 truckloads of humanitarian aid to reach Gaza through cargo crossings Tuesday, defense officials said. But an Israeli naval vessel in the Mediterranean rammed and turned back a cabin cruiser carrying 16 international activists hoping to deliver medical aid to Gaza and protest the Israeli blockade.

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boudreaux@latimes.com