Re: Israeli occupation forces breach the truce and bombard areas of north Gaza
Israel warns losing patience over truce violations
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061129/wl_mideast_afp/mideastconflict_061129121417
JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israel](http://search.news.yahoo.com/search/news/?p=Israel) has warned that the Jewish state was losing patience over Palestinian rocket attacks that have continued to violate a tentative four-day ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
Wednesday’s warnings come amid a flurry of diplomatic efforts to shore up the truce, with Egypt’s intelligence chief Omar Suleiman in Israel and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice](http://search.news.yahoo.com/search/news/?p=Condoleezza+Rice) to meet Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas Thursday.
“The test period accorded by the prime minister to the Palestinians is nearing the end,” said Tzahi Hanegbi, a key ally of premier Ehud Olmert and chairman of parliament’s influential defence and foreign affairs committee. “The prime minister said the policy of restraint will only last a few days,” the MP added, speaking on public radio.
Militants in Gaza fired isolated rockets towards southern Israel on each of the first three days of the truce, violating an accord brokered after 400 Palestinians and three Israelis were killed in Gaza in five months.
A source in Olmert’s office similarly emphasized that “Israel’s patience has limits”, in comments to AFP on Wednesday. "The prime minister ordered the army not to respond although since the start of the ceasefire 12 rockets have been fired from the Gaza Strip towards Israeli territory," added the official on condition of anonymity.
At talks with EU ambassadors on Tuesday, Olmert, who has outlined a vision of peace with the Palestinians, said “Israel will continue to show restraint” but “will react” if the rockets continue, said spokesman Miri Eisin.
Olmert also said he was “disappointed by the continued firing” of rockets.
“I very much hope that the Palestinians will honor their commitments and that the ceasefire will continue as we are doing,” he said, according to Eisin.
The latest projectile landed on Tuesday in the cemetery of Sderot, Defence Minister Amir Peretz’s home town that has borne the brunt of many thousands of rockets fired from Gaza into Israel over the past six years.
One of the nebulous cells of the radical Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which is linked to Abbas’s Fatah party, claimed the attack, which it charged had targeted the sprawling Israeli city of Ashkelon.