MIDDLE EAST:The Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert yesterday rejected the possibility of ceasefire talks with Hamas, saying Israel would press ahead with its military operations in Gaza and would refuse to negotiate with an organisation that refused to recognise it.
"Operations against terrorists will continue as they have been conducted for many months," Mr Olmert told his Cabinet.
"There is no other way to describe what is happening in the Gaza Strip except as a real war between the Israeli army and terror groups."
The Israeli leader said his government would not agree to a ceasefire with Hamas as long as the Islamic movement refused to renounce violence and to recognise the Jewish state.
"Whoever accepts the Quartet principles is a partner in talks, but whoever isn't willing to do so, to our regret, cannot be a partner for dialogue with us," Mr Olmert said. "Our policy will not change."
Late last week, several Hamas officials suggested the Islamic movement, which wrested control of Gaza earlier this year, was ready for a temporary truce with Israel. The signals followed a sustained Israeli military assault in Gaza on militants who have been firing rockets into Israel.
At least two Israeli cabinet ministers have said publicly Israel should consider a ceasefire and the defence minister Ehud Barak is also said to be in favour. "If Hamas comes to us with a serious proposal for a long-term truce, in my opinion Israel should not reject it," Labour Party minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said over the weekend.
Mr Barak, who heads the centre-left Labour Party, told ministers yesterday that if Gaza militants stop firing rockets into Israel, "we won't be opposed to quiet. Hamas' consideration of a hudna [ truce] stems from our effective operations and targeted killings," he added.
Mr Olmert told his ministers that the army is making headway in its efforts to halt the rocket attacks. In the past week, more than 20 Palestinian militants, mainly from Islamic Jihad, but also Hamas, have been killed in strikes by the Israeli military.
The Israeli prime minister fears that if he agrees to a truce with Hamas, it will undermine the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, who is waging his own campaign against the Islamic movement after it violently subdued his more moderate Fatah movement in the June takeover of Gaza.
Mr Abbas' position, however, will not have been strengthened by the news yesterday that Israel is planning to build hundreds of housing units in a neighbourhood in East Jerusalem and in a settlement not far from the disputed city.
Some 240 housing units are to be built in Ma'ale Adumim, the largest settlement in the West Bank, and a further 500 in Har Homa, a neighbourhood in a part of Jerusalem that the Palestinians claim.
Palestinian leaders have pointed to settlement construction as one of the main stumbling blocks in peace talks, which were relaunched at a US-led summit last month after a seven-year hiatus.
News of the settlement construction came just a day before Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams were to meet for a second round of talks since the summit.
"We can't understand these frantic settlement activities at a time when we are talking about final status negotiations," the official Palestinian Authority news service WAFA, quoted Mr Abbas as saying.
"We have begun negotiations and they face obstacles, the most prominent of which is the issue of settlements, which has held us back for so long."