President Barack Obama's Middle East envoy called today for a Gaza ceasefire to be consolidated, holding talks in Israel and Egypt and promising a vigorous pursuit of peace under the new US administration.
A surge of violence has threatened the fragile separate truces that Israel and the Gaza Strip's Hamas rulers put into effect on January 18th after a 22-day Israeli offensive.
Israeli aircraft bombed smuggling tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border in a response to the killing yesterday of an Israeli soldier on patrol along Israel's frontier with the coastal enclave.
Former US Senator George Mitchell, Mr Obama's envoy, said it was "of critical importance that the ceasefire be extended and consolidated, and we support Egypt's continuing efforts in that regard."
He was speaking at a Cairo news conference after talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, whose country is trying to mediate a long-term truce.
Mr Mitchell, who helped to resolve the Northern Ireland conflict and headed a commission that made Israeli-Palestinian peace recommendations in 2001, said Washington was "committed to vigorously pursuing lasting peace and stability in the region".
Mr Mitchell later held talks in Israel with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, making no public comments at the meeting, and planned to see Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas tomorrow.
Western diplomats said Mr Mitchell would not meet officials of Hamas. The Islamist group is shunned by the West over its refusal to recognise Israel, renounce violence and accept existing interim peace deals.
In a report that coincided with the US envoy's mission, Israel's Peace Now group said construction in Jewish settlements - which the Mitchell report eight years ago recommended should be halted - was stepped up last year.
According to Peace Now, 1,257 new structures were built in West Bank settlements in 2008, a 57 per cent increase over 2007.
"This is the virus of peace," Palestinian peace negotiator Saeb Erekat said, calling on the Obama administration to press Israel to halt the expansion.
In defiance of the Mitchell recommendations and a 2003 peace "road map" that serves as the basis for Palestinian statehood talks, Israel has said it would continue to build in existing settlements to meet the "natural growth" of their populations.
Mr Mitchell's week-long mission follows a call by Mr Obama for a return to Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. The new US leader has made clear the Middle East conflict will be a high priority as he tries to repair a US image battered by the war in Iraq.
Citing "security incidents in the south", a senior Israeli official said Defence Minister Ehud Barak cancelled a planned visit to the United States, where he was to have held talks tomorrow with Defence Secretary Robert Gates.
While Israeli leaders weighed more military action, Palestinian work crews used giant yellow bulldozers and backhoes to repair tunnels damaged by bombing during the Gaza war and in the latest attack.
Israel fears Hamas could rebuild the underground network to replenish an arsenal of rockets used in cross-border attacks on its southern communities before and during the Gaza campaign.
Some 1,300 Palestinians, including at least 700 civilians, were killed in the offensive, the Hamas-run Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip said. Israel, which said it launched its assaults to stop rocket salvoes, put its death toll in the war at 10 soldiers and three civilians.
Israel has secured US and European pledges to help to prevent Hamas from rearming through the tunnels and by sea.
Israel also has lobbied its Western allies to put pressure on Cairo to seal its porous border with the Gaza Strip.
Palestinians have relied on the tunnels as an economic lifeline, smuggling in commercial goods that Israel has not allowed past the blockade it tightened on the Gaza Strip after Hamas seized the territory in internal fighting in 2007.
In the Gaza Strip, a little-known Islamist group claimed responsibility for Tuesday's bomb attack on the Israeli patrol.
Hamas and other militant groups defended the strike as a response to what they said were ceasefire violations by Israel in which two Palestinians were killed last week.
After the explosion, Israeli fire killed a Palestinian, identified by Gaza medical workers as a farmer. An Israeli air strike seriously wounded a militant on a motorcycle who the military said was involved in the bombing attack.
Agencies