Reuters – A relative of Palestinian farmer Anwar al-Beram cries during his funeral in Khan Younis in the southern …
GAZA (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama's Middle East envoy called in Egypt Wednesday for a Gaza ceasefire to be consolidated and pledged the new administration would vigorously pursue peace and stability in the region.
A surge of violence has threatened the fragile separate truces that Israel and the Gaza Strip's Hamas rulers put into effect on January 18 after a 22-day Israeli offensive.
Israeli aircraft bombed smuggling tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border in a response to the killing Tuesday of an Israeli soldier on patrol along Israel's frontier with the coastal enclave.
Citing "security incidents in the south," a senior Israeli official said Defense Minister Ehud Barak canceled a planned visit to the United States, where he was to have held talks on Thursday with Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
While Israeli leaders weighed more military action, Palestinian work crews used giant yellow bulldozers and backhoes to repair tunnels damaged by bombing during the Gaza war and in the latest attack.
Israel fears Hamas could rebuild the underground network to replenish an arsenal of rockets used in cross-border attacks on its southern communities before and during the Gaza campaign.
Some 1,300 Palestinians, including at least 700 civilians, were killed in the offensive, the Hamas-run Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip said. Israel, which said it launched its assaults to stop rocket salvoes, put its death toll in the war at 10 soldiers and three civilians.
Former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, Obama's envoy, said in Cairo it was "of critical importance that the ceasefire be extended and consolidated, and we support Egypt's continuing efforts in that regard."
He was speaking at a news conference after talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, whose country is trying to mediate a long-term truce.
The envoy, who helped to resolve the Northern Ireland conflict and headed a commission that made Israeli-Palestinian peace recommendations in 2001, said Washington was "committed to vigorously pursuing lasting peace and stability in the region."
Mitchell later arrived in Israel and planned to meet Israeli leaders. He will also hold talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the occupied West Bank Thursday.
Western diplomats said he would not meet officials of Hamas. The Islamist group is shunned by the West over its refusal to recognize Israel, renounce violence and accept existing interim peace deals.
Mitchell's week-long mission follows a call by Obama for a return to Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. The new U.S. leader has made clear the Middle East conflict will be a high priority as he tries to repair a U.S. image battered by the war in Iraq.
"VIOLENT PROVOCATIONS"
In the Gaza Strip, a little-known Islamist group claimed responsibility for Tuesday's bomb attack on the Israeli patrol.
Hamas and other militant groups defended the strike as a response to what they said were ceasefire violations by Israel in which two Palestinians were killed last week.
After the explosion, Israeli fire killed a Palestinian, identified by Gaza medical workers as a farmer. An Israeli air strike seriously wounded a militant on a motorcycle who the military said was involved in the bombing attack.
Israel followed up those attacks by sending aircraft to bomb smuggling tunnels in the southern Gaza town of Rafah. There were no reported casualties.
Israel has secured U.S. and European pledges to help to prevent Hamas from rearming through the tunnels and by sea. Israel also has lobbied its Western allies to put pressure on Cairo to seal its porous border with the Gaza Strip.
Palestinians have relied on the tunnels as an economic lifeline, smuggling in commercial goods that Israel has not allowed past the blockade it tightened on the Gaza Strip after Hamas seized the territory in internal fighting in 2007.
Israeli leaders, responding to Tuesday's explosion at the Gaza border and running in a February 10 national election, promised voters they would hit back hard.
Mark Regev, a spokesman for outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said Israel held Hamas responsible for "all hostile fire" from the territory.
"Israel wants the quiet in (southern Israel) to continue, but in response to violent provocations by Hamas, provocations deliberately designed to undermine the quiet, Israel will act to defend herself. If Hamas continues with its violent provocations, the ceasefire will simply not exist," he said.
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