Chicago Tribune

JERUSALEM – Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz suggested Sunday that Israel could target senior Hamas figures as an armed confrontation between the two sides widened in the Gaza Strip with more missile strikes and cross-border rocket attacks.

Two Hamas militants were killed and an Israeli was seriously wounded.

The slide back into conflict after a 16-month truce was triggered by a day of Israeli shelling and missile strikes against militants in Gaza on Friday in which 11 Palestinians were killed, including seven members of a family on a beach outing.

The deaths prompted the armed wing of Hamas to announce that it would resume attacks, including suicide bombings in Israeli cities. Israeli police were on high alert across the country, especially at malls and on buses, where suicide bombers have struck in the past, a police spokesman said.

Hamas militants launched a barrage of homemade Qassam rockets at southern Israel on Sunday and one landed near a school outside the town of Sderot, seriously wounding a maintenance worker. Three other people were lightly hurt in other communities, and one house took a direct hit.

The army said more than 30 rockets were launched, and 21 landed in Israel. The crude rockets are wildly inaccurate and rarely cause casualties, but pose an unpredictable threat that has unnerved residents of Sderot, which is near the border with the Gaza Strip.

Sderot Mayor Eli Moyal ordered schools closed and urged parents to keep their children at home. Some residents gathered to protest outside the home of Peretz, who lives in Sderot, demanding protection from the government.

A spokesman for Hamas militants threatened to keep up the rocket attacks.

“We have decided to make Sderot a ghost town,” said the spokesman, who identified himself as Abu Ubeideh.

In the Gaza Strip, Israeli aircraft fired missiles at Hamas militants on their way to launch rockets near Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip, the army said. Two militants were killed and three were wounded, the Hamas armed wing and hospital officials said.

In another missile strike, a rocket squad fled a vehicle before it was hit, the army said.

Peretz, who is under pressure to halt the rocket firings, threatened that Israel could widen its target range against Hamas, hitting more senior members of the group if they are involved in attacks.

“No one has an insurance policy,” Peretz said Saturday. “No one endangering Israelis can turn his name or title into an insurance policy.”

On Sunday, Peretz reiterated the threat. “No framework, no title, no status will provide protection for an element that we find is involved in planning or execution of the firing,” he said.

Members of the Hamas-led Palestinian government have not echoed the threats of the group’s armed wing to attack Israel, but warnings have been voiced by Hamas political spokesmen.

“Blood for blood and resistance for violence,” said Hamas lawmaker Mushir al-Masri. “The occupation will realize that the blood of the martyrs is dear. … The enemy will pay a price.”

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said at the weekly meeting of his Cabinet that Israel had taken note of Hamas involvement in violence and recent statements by Hamas commanders, “and we will know when and how to deal with it.”

In another development, two prominent prisoners from Hamas and Islamic Jihad who signed a document with jailed leaders of Fatah and other factions outlining a political platform that calls for a Palestinian state beside Israel withdrew their names Sunday.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has called a referendum on the document in an attempt to bypass Hamas’ rejection of a two-state solution. Hamas opposes the referendum, slated for July 26.

The two prisoner leaders, Abdel Haleq Natshe of Hamas and Bassam Saadi of Islamic Jihad, said in a statement issued in Gaza that they were withdrawing their names from the document because it had been exploited by Abbas to promote his political agenda. The withdrawal of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad prisoners could weaken the appeal of the prisoners’ document as an expression of consensus among Palestinian factions and could hurt its chances of being endorsed in the referendum.

Abbas met Sunday night with Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas to discuss the document and the referendum, after the two sides made little progress toward an agreement in talks Saturday.