By Nidal al-Mughrabi
GAZA (Reuters) - Israel said its Gaza offensive could be "in the final act" Friday amid other signs that a cease-fire could be in the offing to end three weeks of fighting in which more than 1,100 Palestinians have been killed.
However, Israel rebuffed at least two elements of the truce conditions offered by Hamas, and again bombarded the Gaza Strip after a relative lull in the fighting with Islamist militants.
In Doha, Hamas's exiled leader Khaled Meshaal told Arab leaders his group would not accept Israeli cease-fire conditions and would fight on until Israel ended hostilities.
He urged participants at an Arab meeting on Gaza to cut all ties with the Jewish state, a call echoed by Syria and Iran.
Qatar and Mauritania later said they had frozen political and economic ties with Israel.In another sign of the anger the Gaza onslaught has provoked in the Muslim world, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said Israel should be barred from U.N. headquarters for ignoring a U.N. cease-fire resolution.
The inauguration of new U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday is seen by some as a deadline for Israel to bow to mounting international pressure and call off its attacks.
"FINAL ACT"
"Hopefully we're in the final act," Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's spokesman Mark Regev said of cease-fire efforts.
Olmert, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak may sign an agreement as early as Sunday that could underpin a proposed truce, Western officials said.
It was not immediately clear what that agreement would entail, but the officials said it would likely include security arrangements for Gaza's borders with Egypt and Israel, which both want Abbas's forces to reassert control at key crossings.
Israel refuses to deal directly with Hamas. Israeli political sources said the government was considering a unilateral cease-fire and withdrawal that would ignore Hamas's demands for an end to its punitive blockade of the enclave.
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, asked if Israel should end fighting unilaterally, told Channel 10 television: "The security cabinet will convene to make the decision."
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, visiting the region, may attend any ceremony in Cairo, the Western officials said.
"It is time now to even think about a unilateral cease-fire," Ban said in Ramallah before heading to Ankara.
Gazans savoured some respite a day after fierce combat that some had seen as a final Israeli push before a cease-fire.
But Israeli strikes intensified later in the day, killing 22 Gazans. Among them were fighters, including an Islamic Jihad commander in the southern town of Khan Younis, and civilians.
Israeli tank fire hit the home of a Hamas militant, killing his wife and five children, in the central Gaza Strip, medical officials said. The militant was not there at the time.
At least 15 rockets and mortar rounds landed in Israel from Gaza, the army said, wounding five civilians. Such attacks have dwindled during the war, which Israel launched on December 27 with the declared aim of crippling Hamas's rocket-firing capacity.
Ten Israeli soldiers and three civilians have been killed in the campaign.
Medics taking advantage of a "humanitarian pause" in Gaza said they had recovered 23 bodies from areas of the city hardest hit during Thursday's intense fighting.
Chanting crowds attended the funeral of a top Hamas leader, Saeed Seyyam, killed in an Israeli air strike along with nine other people. Seyyam was the interior minister in Gaza's unrecognised government and leader of 13,000 armed security men.
About 45,000 Gazans fleeing battle zones have taken refuge in U.N.-run schools in the enclave, U.N. officials said.
SECURITY PACT
Livni, who flew overnight to Washington, signed a security pact with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice aimed at cutting off Hamas arms supplies.
Under the deal, Israeli officials said, the United States would lead a campaign with its NATO allies to interdict weapons shipments bound for Gaza from Iran and elsewhere. Preventing Hamas from rearming is Israel's main condition for any truce.
"Together the steps that we and other members of the international community can take will contribute to a durable cease-fire," Rice said, without saying when a truce might start.
Senior Israeli official Amos Gilad briefed Defence Minister Ehud Barak after holding more cease-fire talks in Cairo, the defence ministry said. Hamas negotiators are due to meet the Egyptians Saturday to discuss the Israeli response.
Hamas and diplomatic sources said Thursday that Hamas had offered a one-year, renewable truce on condition that all Israeli forces withdrew within five to seven days and that all the border crossings with Israel and Egypt would be opened.
Except for limited humanitarian supplies, the crossings have been all but closed under an Israeli-led blockade since Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007 from Abbas's forces. Hamas had won a Palestinian parliamentary election the previous year.
Israeli forces have killed 1,150 people and wounded about 5,100 during the Gaza war, the Hamas-run Health Ministry said.
(Additional reporting by Adam Entous in Jerusalem; writing by Alistair Lyon, editing by Mark Trevelyan)
