Rockets Hit Israeli Town As Jerusalem Talks Begin

UNITED NATIONS — A barrage of rockets hit a southern Israeli town yesterday just as Israeli and Palestinian Arab representatives officially launched the diplomacy that was set in motion at Annapolis last month, leading the mayor of Sderot to tender his resignation in protest, and many other Israelis to wonder about a familiar linkage between peace diplomacy and an increase in violence.

The dramatic resignation was announced during a live interview on Israel Radio's popular "Morning Show," when Mayor Eli Moyal said he could not "face alone" the rocket attacks on Sderot, Hamas's most frequent target since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.

Israel's army chief of staff, General Gabi Ashkenazi, said yesterday that the military is weighing a large-scale operation to seize land in Gaza. But a government official who spoke on condition of anonymity told The New York Sun that Prime Minister Olmert's Cabinet, which dedicated its meeting yesterday to the unending rocket attacks from Gaza, ordered no such an operation yet.

Israeli officials, meanwhile, made a clear distinction between the current diplomacy and that of the 1990s, often characterized by a late prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, as "we will conduct peace talks as if there is no terror and fight terror as if there are no peace talks." Unlike Yasser Arafat's tactic of using terrorism to bolster his diplomacy, the officials said, the current Fatah leadership is a real peace partner, while a separate entity, Hamas, strives to undermine successful peace talks.

"Hamas is responsible for the violence that comes out of Gaza, whereas we see the legitimate Palestinian government of Abbas and Fayyad as a true peace partner," Mr. Olmert's spokesman, Mark Regev, said, referring to the president and prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, respectively. "It is clear to us that Hamas, using Hezbollah as a model, does not want international diplomacy to succeed."

Teams headed by Israel's foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, and the top Palestinian Arab negotiator, Ahmed Qurei, met yesterday in Jerusalem for a much-anticipated first session, meant to set procedures for future talks, as agreed upon at Annapolis. No date was set yesterday for future sessions, although the negotiators are expected to meet Monday on the sidelines of a Paris conference where Secretary of State Rice, Secretary-General Ban of the United Nations, a former British prime minister, Tony Blair, and Arab and other world officials will try to boost Palestinian Arab state institutions.

But in stark contrast to the international pomp of Paris and Annapolis, where the goal of setting up a Palestinian Arab state by the end of 2008 was announced last month, yesterday's event in Jerusalem was low key and was even moved at the last minute to a much lower-profile venue, the Har-Zion Hotel, from the world-famous King David hotel.

The short session took place amid increased acrimony between the sides. The Palestinian Arab negotiators complained about building permits issued recently for 300 apartment units in an area of Jerusalem that was won by Israel in the war of 1967. America, the U.N., and the European Union, denounced the building tenders, but Jerusalem officials said yesterday it was "unrealistic" to expect them to forgo building in a territory Israel annexed after the Six Day War, before the talks over that area even begun.

The White House yesterday deferred again for six months the execution of an act of Congress that called on the administration to move the American Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. President Bush, nevertheless, said in a statement that he remained "committed to beginning the process of moving our embassy to Jerusalem."

Yesterday's barrage of 18 Kassam rockets on Sderot followed an Israeli incursion into the southern part of Gaza. Nine Palestinian Arab combatants were killed during the Israeli operation while, according to Israel's Channel 10 News, an Israeli Merkava tank was hit by an antitank device not seen before in Gaza.

"This situation cannot last forever," General Ashkenazi said at a Tel Aviv academic conference. "Sooner or later, we will have to achieve operational and intelligence presence" in Gaza, where until now Israeli incursions were short and spotty. His words were largely interpreted as an indication that rocket attacks such as the one that prompted yesterday's resignation in Sderot may push the government to conduct a complex, and potentially bloody, military confrontation with Hamas in Gaza.