UNITED NATIONS – As international pressure increases on Israel to ease its campaign in the heavily populated Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Olmert said targeted attacks against those who launch rockets against Israeli citizens will not stop.

Mr. Olmert addressed several recent incidents in Gaza in which civilians have been killed by Israeli planes targeting terrorists. Though he expressed sorrow at the Palestinian Arab casualties, the prime minister said yesterday that he is concerned that some in the international community blur the moral distinction between the Israeli Defense Force hunting down terrorists and Palestinian Arabs deliberately targeting civilians.

“I don’t believe that the IDF targets civilians,” a senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch, Marc Garlasco, told The New York Sun yesterday.

Mr. Garlasco, who previously was critical of Israel’s findings on the killings of Palestinian Arab civilians on a Gaza beach, said he considered the Israeli army’s investigation into the incident “very serious.” The differences between his findings and those of the Israelis were not that wide, Mr. Garlasco said. Earlier this week he met with the Israeli army investigator, Major General Meir Kalifi, who was “very generous with his time,” Mr. Garlasco said.

“If we take just the Israeli version at face value,” the former American Marine said, the IDF’s argument that the Israeli shelling was not responsible for the deaths is “compelling.” Nevertheless, Mr. Garlasco added that Israel dismissed evidence supplied by Palestinian Arabs and others who were in the area too quickly. He maintained his call for an independent investigation into the event.

Palestinian Arabs also have asked for an international investigation under the U.N.’s umbrella, but Israel has rejected those calls.

“If you talk about an international investigation into an ongoing terror campaign against Israeli civilians, then I think there should be one,” the deputy Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Daniel Carmon, said. He said the IDF investigators, who will publish their final report into the incident soon, will have the final word on the issue.

Though the Israeli army maintains it was not responsible for the killing of the Ghalia family on a Gaza beach June 9, army officials have apologized for several incidents since then. Errant air attacks have killed civilians in recent weeks as the air force targeted rocket-launching operatives in several Gaza cities.

“I am sorry from the depths of my heart for the unintended deaths of innocent people in Gaza and Khan Younis,” Mr. Olmert said yesterday, addressing the Caesarea Forum, an economic conference in Jerusalem. But he said his government’s top responsibility is to protect Israelis against attacks launched from Gaza. “The lives and security of the citizens of Sderot are no less important to me, if not more important,” he said, referring to the southern town most often targeted by Kassam rockets.

On Wednesday, Secretary-General Annan said he “deeply deplores” the killing of three children in Gaza this week in “an attempted Israeli targeted killing of alleged militants.” He called on Israel “to respect international law and to ensure that its actions are proportionate and do not put civilians at grave risk.”

In a debate on international law at the Security Council yesterday, the Palestinian Arab U.N. observer, Riyad Mansour, called on the council to “undertake the appropriate measures” to end what he said were Israeli violations of international law.

Meanwhile, in Geneva, the Organization of the Islamic Conference said Palestinian Arab issues will be put on the agenda on Monday once the recently launched U.N. Human Rights Council begins discussing “pressing human rights issues.” The only other issue currently on the agenda is a European Union proposal to aid “human rights defenders” in several countries. Canada is considering putting Darfur, Sudan, on the agenda. And the current president of the Asian group in Geneva, Saudi Arabia, plans to raise the issue of “religious intolerance,” aiming to highlight anti-Islamic cartoons in the Western press.

The proposals have raised concerns among supporters of the new body that it will revert to the politicized agenda that so discredited its predecessor, the Commission on Human Rights.

“Religious intolerance is a great issue,” the director of the human rights organization U.N. Watch, Hillel Neuer, said of the Saudi proposal. Saudi Arabia is a good place to start addressing such an issue, he said, as its schools “teach a new generation of children to hate Christian and Jews.”