Israel refuses Gaza truce

JERUSALEM — Rejecting a proposed truce, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Sunday that Israel would press ahead with its military offensive in the Gaza Strip to free an abducted soldier and stop cross-border rocket attacks by Palestinian militants.

The 12-day campaign has left more than 50 Palestinians dead — militants and civilians — and caused extensive damage in the Gaza Strip, where the 1.4 million residents have been coping with losses of electricity and shortages of water and fuel. An Israeli soldier has been killed by friendly fire, and rocket attacks on southern Israel have continued.

Olmert told the weekly meeting of his Cabinet that military operations would go on, for months if necessary, participants said.

"This is a war for which it is not possible to set a timetable, and we can't say how long it will continue," Olmert said, according to a Cabinet official.

Army plans call for continued ground incursions, along with air and artillery strikes, to deter militants from firing rockets and to ratchet up pressure for the captive soldier's release. Cpl. Gilad Shalit was seized by Palestinian militants from Hamas and two other groups in an attack on an Israeli border outpost near the Gaza Strip on June 25.

Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, of Hamas, called Saturday for a cease-fire and negotiations for the release of Shalit, but Israeli officials have said that military action will stop only when the soldier is freed and militants stop firing rockets at Israel. Olmert has rejected the militants' demands for a prisoner exchange.

On Sunday, an Israeli airstrike on a car carrying Hamas militants near the town of Rafah killed a bystander and wounded several others, Palestinian officials said. The army said one of the militants who fled the car was hit.

Israeli artillery continued to pound areas of the northern Gaza Strip from where militants have fired rockets, but the attacks on southern Israel went on. One rocket landed on a road near the border town of Sderot, wounding a motorist. A second rocket crashed through the roof of a house in Sderot, causing extensive damage and shaking up residents, but there were no casualties.

In Gaza City, hundreds of Palestinians marched in the funeral of a woman and two of her children killed Saturday in an explosion as they sat in the backyard of their house. Palestinians said the blast, which also wounded four of the woman's sons, was caused by an Israeli missile. The army said an airborne strike in the area hit militants carrying anti-tank rockets, and that an investigation was under way.

United Nations aid agencies said Saturday that Israeli border closings and strikes on civilian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip had brought it to the brink of a public-health disaster and that "civilians are disproportionately paying the price of this conflict."

The U.N. Relief and Works Agency, which helps Palestinian refugees, said the entire Gaza Strip has been without electricity 12 to 18 hours a day since an Israeli strike destroyed the territory's only power plant. The agency said a shortage of fuel for backup generators powering Gaza's wells and sewage pumping plants has cut operations, creating water shortages and a "critical situation" at the sewage plants.

The World Health Organization said that in the last week, cases of diarrhea went up by 160 percent compared with the same period last year, and that fuel stocks for generators powering hospitals and clinics would last two weeks at most. Also, Israel has tightened travel restrictions on Palestinian cancer patients and others referred to Israeli hospitals for treatment, allowing in "only a handful of extremely critical cases" since June 25, the day of the soldier's abduction.

The World Food Program said that flour mills, food factories and bakeries are being forced to reduce production due to power shortages, and that supplies of sugar, dairy products and milk are running extremely low because of limited supplies from Israel.

The agencies said there is a backlog of more than 230 containers of food at the main cargo crossing from Israel into the Gaza Strip.