Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert rejected yesterday international criticism of Israel's offensive in Gaza and demands by militants to free Palestinian prisoners in exchange for an abducted Israeli soldier.

 

Olmert, speaking to foreign media, said operations in Gaza to press for the soldier's release and an end to cross-border rocket attacks against Israel would continue indefinitely.

 

He also reaffirmed his commitment to his plan to redraw the Jewish settlement map in the occupied West Bank unilaterally in the absence of peace talks with the Palestinians, but acknowledged "this will be difficult."

 

"I will not release prisoners for the trade of Corporal Gilad Shalit to Hamas," Olmert said, referring to the 19-year-old tank gunner abducted in Israel on June 25 and taken to Gaza by militants who tunneled under a border fence.

 

Militant groups, including the armed wing of the governing Hamas movement that kidnapped Shalit, have demanded Israel free more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. Olmert has said he would not bend to what he termed extortion.

 

At a rare news conference in Damascus after Olmert spoke in Jerusalem, Hamas leader-in-exile Khaled Meshaal said: "Our people ... are united on the insistence to swap the captured soldier with prisoners in the jails of the Zionist enemy."

 

Israeli leaders have hinted strongly that Israel, which pulled troops and settlers out of Gaza last year, could kill Meshaal and other Hamas leaders if any harm came to Shalit.

 

"We have told mediators and those who made political efforts (to end the crisis) that we support the peaceful, calm handling of this matter but you need to understand the needs of the Palestinian people," Meshaal said.

 

"The solution is simple: swap. But Israel rejects this. The mediators in Europe know this, but they are incapable. Israel thinks it will bring the soldier back by (military) escalation, but it is disillusioned."

 

Lashing out at the European Union, which has been outspoken in its criticism of Israel's ground and air assaults, Olmert said the bloc should have focused instead on daily rocket fire by militants in Gaza against the Jewish state.

 

In the latest violence in the Gaza Strip, Israeli air strikes killed three militants and wounded five others.

 

More than 50 Palestinians, including about 20 civilians, have been killed since the Israeli offensive began, Gaza residents said.

 

(China Daily July 11, 2006)