JERUSALEM — A Palestinian rocket fell near the Israeli city of Ashkelon on Tuesday, briefly threatening a fragile period of calm.
Israeli defense officials said the army would not retaliate for the attack, since Hamas militants had not launched the rocket. They spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject.
Egypt said it was optimistic about mediating a truce between Israel and the Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip. The situation remained tense, however, with the lead negotiator for the West Bank-based Palestinian government accusing Israel of endangering the peace process with new plans for settlement expansion.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a tiny militant group, claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s rocket attack. Israel said the rocket landed in an open area south of Ashkelon and caused no injuries.
Ashkelon, a city of 120,000 about 10 miles north of Gaza, repeatedly came under fire during intense fighting earlier this month between Israel and the Hamas militant group. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert visited Ashkelon on Tuesday but was not in the area at the time of the rocket strike.
Palestinian rocket squads repeatedly hit the coastal city, a sign of their growing sophistication, in attacks that helped prompt fighting that killed three Israelis and 120 Palestinians, including dozens of civilians, according to Palestinian officials.
Israel halted the offensive in Gaza last week, and militants have sharply scaled back their rocket fire since then. Egypt has been serving as a mediator between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers, but both sides have denied talk of an official cease-fire.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said Tuesday that he was hopeful that his country would be able to bring a complete halt to the violence by mediating an understanding between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza.
“The situation is still very difficult, and we are hopeful that Egypt would manage in the near future to have a kind of arrangement between the Israelis and Palestinians whereby the firing of missiles will come to an end and the intrusions of the Israeli army will be stopped,” Aboul Gheit said.
An agreement could include an exchange of prisoners and a lifting of embargo restrictions at Gaza’s Israeli-controlled crossings, Aboul Gheit said.
The violence has not been the only threat to the U.S.-backed peace process.
The lead Palestinian negotiator, Ahmed Qureia, said that a new Israeli plan to build 350 homes in a settlement near Jerusalem endangers the struggling peace process. The plan also has received harsh international criticism.
“These violations could lead to the destruction of the peace process,” Qureia told reporters in the West Bank town of Ramallah.
