By Nidal al-Mughrabi
GAZA (Reuters) - Israel responded to the death of anIsraeli in a rocket attack from the Gaza Strip by stepping upair strikes on Thursday that raised to 17 the number ofPalestinians killed in the territory in the past two days.
Most of the Palestinian dead were militants but alsoincluded a six-month-old boy.
"We are at the height of the battle," Israeli PrimeMinister Ehud Olmert said in Tokyo, where he met U.S. Secretaryof State Condoleezza Rice before her visit next week to Israeland the occupied West Bank to try to push along peace talks.
But Olmert appeared to suggest a major Israeli groundoperation in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip was not imminent, sayingIsrael's fight against militants was a "long process" and ithad "no magic formula" to halt frequent rocket attacks.
Six Palestinians, at least five of them militants, werekilled in air strikes on Thursday in the Gaza Strip, medicalworkers said.
On Wednesday, after five senior Hamas men died in anIsraeli air attack on their van, a rocket fired by the Islamistgroup at the Israeli border town of Sderot killed an Israelicivilian, the first such death since May.
The Israeli military said 21 rockets and 12 mortar bombswere fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip on Thursday. Threepeople were wounded and Israel's internal security minister,visiting Sderot, scrambled for cover as a siren sounded.
Nabil Abu Rdainah, a spokesman for Palestinian PresidentMahmoud Abbas, who is negotiating with Israel, said in astatement its military actions "meant only one thing: theIsraeli government ... aims to destroy the peace process".
Olmert said at the end of a four-day visit to Japan "thecontinuous shooting of Qassam rockets against uninvolved,innocent civilians is a major threat to the stability" ofIsrael's political contacts with Abbas's Palestinian Authority.
He said, however, that he planned to hold another of hisregular meetings with Abbas within the next two weeks.
Washington hopes the talks can result in a statehood dealthis year but Palestinians have complained about their slowpace and Olmert has said the goal of the negotiations was anunderstanding of "basic principles" rather than a full accord.
DEAD BABY
At a Gaza funeral attended by hundreds, the father ofsix-month-old Mohammed al-Burai cradled the baby's body in hisarms. It was wrapped in the green flag of Hamas.
Christopher Gunness, spokesman for the United NationsRelief and Works Agency, said the infant was the grandson of aguard living in a family home in an UNRWA school compound hitby shrapnel and debris from an air strike on the InteriorMinistry.
In Sderot, Israelis mourned 47-year-old Ronnie Yehiye, afather of four. A truck driver, Yehiye had undergone a kidneytransplant and was killed when a rocket struck a college wherehe was receiving vocational retraining.
In Tokyo, Rice was asked whether she urged Olmert not touse disproportionate force in responding to the rockets.
"I think that's not a good way to address this issue. Theissue is that the attacks -- rocket attacks -- need to stop,"she told reporters.
Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki, speaking inEast Jerusalem, said: "These stupid missiles being launched --firecrackers, but at the end they have killed Israeli civilians-- we condemn this, clearly, openly, straightforwardly.
"But at the same time, we condemn all the Israeliincursions into Gaza, killing Palestinian civilians, destroyingtheir houses, preventing them from having a normal life," hesaid.
In the West Bank town of Nablus, Israeli troops killed twomilitants in a raid on Balata refugee camp, a hospital officialand local residents said. An Israeli army spokeswoman saidtroops opened fire after spotting armed men threatening them.
(Additional reporting by Arshad Mohammed and Tova Cohen inTokyo, Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza, Atef Saad in Nablus and DanWilliams, Ori Lewis and Alastair Macdonald in Jerusalem;writing by Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem; editing by DominicEvans)
