Clock ticking for Hamas over soldier, says Israel

Jerusalem, June 27 : Israel rejected a demand by Palestinian militants to release Palestinian women and youths in its prisons in return for information on an abducted Israeli soldier and threatened a punishing offensive in the Gaza Strip.

With tensions on the Israel-Gaza frontier at their highest since Israeli troops and settlers quit the territory last year, militants fired rockets into southern Israel late yesterday, wounding four people, the Israeli army said.

In northern Gaza, Palestinians began blocking roads with mounds of earth as Israeli armour massed on the other side of the border and Israel awaited word on the fate of Corporal Gilad Shalit, kidnapped by gunmen who infiltrated on Sunday.

Izz el-Deen al-Qassam, the governing Hamas movement's armed wing, along with the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) and the Islamic Army, said Israel would not get information about the soldier unless it freed all jailed Palestinian women and youths.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert held Hamas, an Islamist group that came to power in March, and the Palestinian Authority chaired by President Mahmoud Abbas responsible for Sunday's assault.

''The question of releasing prisoners is not on the agenda of the Israeli government at all,'' Olmert said in a speech.

''The time is approaching for a comprehensive, sharp and severe Israeli operation. We will not wait forever,'' he said. ''We will not become a target of Hamas-terrorist blackmail.'' U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged Israel late yesterday to give diplomacy a chance to win the release of an Israeli soldier taken hostage by militants in Gaza.

''There really needs to be an effort now to try and calm the situation, not to let the situation escalate and to give diplomacy a chance to work to try to get this release,'' Rice told reporters en route to Pakistan.

MILITANTS' STATEMENT

''Military Statement 1'', issued by the three militant groups, did not confirm directly they were holding Shalit, nor give details of his condition. Israeli and Palestinian officials said about 100 Palestinian women and 300 youths were in Israeli jails for alleged security offences.

In a separate statement, the PRC said yesterday it had kidnapped a Jewish settler in the occupied West Bank. It produced no evidence to substantiate the claim.

''We have all the proof and the details about the location and the operation, but we will leave the enemy in its confusion,'' the PRC statement said.

The Israeli army said it had no knowledge of any abduction in the West Bank but was checking the claim.

On Sunday, gunmen from Gaza dug under a border fence, killed two soldiers and abducted Shalit, a 19-year-old tank gunner. It was the first such incident since Israel's withdrawal after 38 years of occupation.

Militant groups said the raid was in response to the killing of 14 Palestinian civilians in Israeli air strikes in Gaza against militants behind cross-border rocket attacks.

Israel Television's military affairs correspondent, who is briefed regularly by the army, said yesterday it would take another day or two until enough forces were in place for a ground operation in the Gaza Strip.

He said the military was also preparing air strikes.

Other defence commentators in Israel said Olmert could not rush into a Gaza operation for fear militants would kill the soldier, but waiting too long would make him appear weak.

Abbas held another round of talks late yesterday with Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas leader, in Gaza. An official said Abbas appealed to Haniyeh to try to locate the soldier.

''We are ready to face the Israeli aggression,'' said Mushir al-Masri, a Hamas legislator.

Rice said that if Hamas was behind the raid it would show that the group -- considered a terrorist organisation by the United States -- was ignoring international pressure to eschew violence.

''This is not behaviour that is tolerable in the international system,'' she said.

Reuters