JERUSALEM: President Barack Obama's Mideast envoy turned his attention to the Western-backed Palestinian government in the West Bank on Thursday as rockets thudded into southern Israel and Israeli warplanes attacked new targets in Gaza.
George Mitchell was seen entering Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' headquarters in the West Bank town of Ramallah and was due to meet later in the day with Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.
He is not meeting with Hamas, the Islamic group that is Abbas' rival and the ruler of the Gaza Strip. The U.S., Israel and European Union have blacklisted Hamas as a terrorist group.
Mitchell held his first round of talks with regional leaders in Cairo and Jerusalem Wednesday to determine the next steps toward reviving peace negotiations following Israel's blistering military offensive against Palestinians.
But a flare-up of violence in Gaza underscored the more immediate priority — shoring up a 10-day-old cease-fire. Palestinians fired a rocket into Israel early Thursday, and residents of the south Gaza town of Khan Younis said an Israeli airstrike there wounded an unidentified man on a motorcycle and five passers-by, among them children walking home from school.
The Israeli military said it targeted the motorcyclist because he was involved in a bomb attack Tuesday on the Gaza-Israel border which killed an Israeli soldier and wounded three others.
On Wednesday Israeli warplanes struck Gaza smuggling tunnels and a weapons factory. There were no reports of casualties.
In Qatar on Wednesday, Hamas' supreme leader, Khaled Mashaal, said the group would not link the opening of crossings to the release of the Israeli soldier.
Hamas wants Israel to free hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Schalit.
Egypt has been exploring the possibility of including some Hamas personnel in a Palestinian Authority presence at the border, but that would require some form of reconciliation between the factions, which remain bitter rivals.
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