JERUSALEM (AP) – Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip fired three homemade rockets into Israel on Friday after the Israeli prime minister pledged to push forward with airstrikes against the militants despite a series of civilian casualties.

The Israeli army said there were no injuries or damage. But the attack prompted one Israeli lawmaker to call for the army to launch a military offensive into the densely populated Gaza Strip.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert apologized twice Thursday for civilian deaths in recent airstrikes in Gaza. But he added, “Israel will continue to carry out targeted attacks against terrorists and those who try to harm Israeli citizens.”

One apology came after an informal meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Jordan, the first meeting between Israeli and Palestinian leaders in more than a year.

Abbas was headed to Gaza for talks with Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of the hard-line Islamic group Hamas. The two leaders have been trying to reach a power-sharing agreement that would ease growing tensions between the rival parties and bring the sides away from the brink of civil war.

“We hope to reach a deal soon because our people are waiting for such a deal,” Abbas said from his office in Ramallah.

Haniyeh said the sides had made progress in their negotiations, and only small differences remained.

Tensions between Abbas’ Fatah Party and Hamas have been rising since the Islamic group won a January parliamentary election. Most of the differences have been about control of the security forces, and the tensions have at times spilled over into outright violence.

At least 22 Palestinians, including civilians, have been killed in the factional fighting.

Israeli lawmakers, meanwhile, debated whether the army was dealing properly with the constant threat of Palestinian rocket fire from Gaza.

Yuval Steinitz, former chairman of the Israeli parliament’s foreign affairs and defense committee, accused Palestinian authorities of failing to prevent rocket fire. He said Israel must now take further steps to protect itself.

“I call on the government of Israel to wait no further, but to launch a comprehensive ground operation in Gaza for several weeks, to strike at the very foundations of the terrorist infrastructure,” the lawmaker from the hard-line Likud Party told Israel Radio.

But Haim Ramon, a Cabinet minister in the ruling Kadima Party, warned such an offensive could cost many lives on both sides and leave Israeli forces bogged down in a reoccupation of the territory, first captured in the 1967 Mideast War.

“Those ‘few weeks’ will turn into 40 years,” he told Israel Radio.

Meanwhile, the Gaza-Egypt Rafah border crossing was briefly reopened but an Israeli security alert prevented it from operating at full capacity. The border has been closed for most of the past three days due to the Israeli security alert, leaving hundreds of Palestinians stranded on either side and waiting on the asphalt in the hot sun.

The crossing has recently been used to smuggle millions of dollars of cash into Gaza. Cabinet ministers in the Hamas-led government have brought money in suitcases into Gaza to bypass an international boycott that has made it impossible for the Palestinian Authority to pay three months of salaries to some 165,000 employees.

Israel, the United States and other Western countries have said they will not lift the sanctions unless Hamas recognizes Israel, renounces violence and accepts past peace agreements. Hamas has so far rejected the demands.

Despite repeated airstrikes and artillery fire by the Israeli army, Palestinian militants have fired rockets toward Israel almost daily since the Jewish state completed its withdrawal from the Gaza Strip last September.

The Israeli airstrikes have killed dozens of militants. But three recent air force raids also killed 13 Palestinian civilians, drawing international condemnation.

Senior military officers have said they are prepared to send troops back into Gaza but would only do so as a last resort.

AP-ES-06-23-06 1208EDT

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