A woman at her home in Sderot, Israel, which was damaged Tuesday by a rocket fired from Gaza. (Amir Cohen/Reuters)

Rockets hit Israel, breaking Hamas truce

JERUSALEM: Three Qassam rockets fired from Gaza on Tuesday struck the Israeli border town of Sderot and its environs, causing no serious injuries but constituting the first serious breach of a five-day-old truce between Israel and Hamas, the Islamic group that controls Gaza.

The crack in the calm came on the eve of a looming political crisis in Israel: barring last-minute maneuvers and back-room deals, a preliminary reading of a bill for the dissolution of the Israeli Parliament scheduled for Wednesday was expected to garner a majority of votes in the legislature, and threatened to break up the country's governing coalition.

Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said the rocket fire from Gaza had been "a grave violation of the calm" that came into effect last Thursday, but he would not immediately comment on whether Israel would react.

Islamic Jihad, a small extremist group, claimed responsibility for the attack and said it had been a response to an Israeli military raid in the West Bank city of Nablus at dawn on Tuesday, in which a senior Islamic Jihad operative and another Palestinian man were killed. Palestinian officials identified the two men killed as Tareq Abu Ghali, 24, and Iyad Khanfar, 21, a university student.

An Israeli Army spokesman said that Abu Ghali had been involved in terrorism and that he was "killed in an exchange of fire." The man killed with him was armed, the spokesman said.

Under pressure from Hamas, Islamic Jihad had agreed to abide by the temporary truce, which was meant to apply only to Gaza, but had balked at the idea of not responding to Israeli military actions in the West Bank.

Previous cease-fire understandings in Gaza have fallen apart over continuing Israeli raids in the West Bank and the inability of Palestinian leaders to contain the smaller groups. But Hamas has been in full control of Gaza for the last year, and Israel has said it will hold Hamas responsible for enforcing the calm.

A single mortar shell was also fired from Gaza late Monday night and landed on the Israeli side of the border fence.

The rocket attack occurred hours after Olmert met President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheik to discuss the next steps in the tenuous Egyptian-mediated truce and the renewal of efforts to resolve the case of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli corporal held by Hamas in Gaza since June 25, 2006.

At the same time, there has apparently been a hitch in what was expected to be an imminent prisoner exchange between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Israel seemed to be preparing to declare that two of its soldiers held by the group since July 2006 were presumed dead — which could theoretically reduce the price that Israel is willing to pay for their return.

The two soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, were badly wounded during their capture in an ambush across the Israeli border, setting off a monthlong war. Hezbollah has offered no proof that they are still alive. Olmert said Tuesday that the indirect negotiations with Hezbollah were continuing.

Against the backdrop of a corruption investigation of Olmert, the Labor Party, led by Defense Minister Ehud Barak, said it intended to back the preliminary vote on Wednesday for the dissolution of Parliament. Initiated by the opposition, the bill is a step toward early elections.

Labor is a crucial junior partner to Olmert's Kadima Party in the governing coalition, but Barak called in late May for Olmert to step down from his post pending the outcome of the police investigation.

In a pre-emptive counterstrike, however, Olmert has said he will not tolerate ministers in his government working toward its demise.

Without Labor, Olmert would be in charge of a minority government whose days would almost certainly be numbered.

Another coalition partner, the ultra-Orthodox Shas, also threatened to support the dissolution bill unless Olmert agreed to a significant increase in child allowances, a demand the prime minister refused to meet by Tuesday.

In a bizarre episode on Tuesday, an Israeli border policeman shot himself to death at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport during the official farewell ceremony for the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and his wife, Carla. President Shimon Peres and Olmert were also there.

The Israeli authorities were investigating whether the border policeman had committed suicide or had shot himself accidentally, but emphasized that the shooting occurred about 200 yards away from the dignitaries, on the perimeter of the ceremony area, and that it did not place the officials in any danger.

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