Israel orders brief halt, then Gaza fight resumes

Even as the Israeli government tentatively welcomed a cease-fire proposal from Egypt and France, its military was instructed to continue its assault on Hamas.

The proposal could mark the first sign of a possible exit from 12 days of bloodshed in Gaza. But Israel says it needs guarantees that any cease-fire will halt rocket fire and prevent Hamas from rearming, while Hamas demands that Gaza's blockaded border crossings be opened.

Israeli strikes in response to continued Hamas rocket fire on southern Israel have killed at least 688 Palestinians since Dec. 27, including around 350 civilians, among them 130 children, according to Palestinian officials.

Israel says it has killed at least 130 Gaza militants since it launched its ground offensive Saturday. Ten Israelis have been killed since the fighting began, including three civilians.

On Wednesday, 29 Palestinians were killed, including at least 22 civilians and two Islamic Jihad militants, medics said. In one incident, a family of four was killed in an airstrike on their car, medics said.

Residents on the Gaza-Egypt border said Israel dropped leaflets in the area, urging them to flee because of planned Israel strikes. Hamas has weapons smuggling tunnels in the area, and Israel has already destroyed dozens of them in airstrikes.

"Because Hamas uses your houses to hide and smuggle military weapons, the IDF will attack the area, between the Egyptian border until the beach road," the leaflet said, according a local U.N. official.

After the leaflets were dropped, more than 800 families in the strip of neighborhoods that run parallel to the Egypt border fled to two U.N. schools turned into temporary shelters.

With the renewed fighting Wednesday, a truce deal still seemed distant. There are also wide gaps between the demands raised by Israel and Hamas.

Still, Israel was to send an envoy, senior Defense Ministry official Amos Gilad, to Cairo on Thursday to hear more about the French-Egyptian truce proposal, whose terms still remain unclear.

The plan calls for an immediate cease-fire for a limited period to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza. It also calls for an urgent meeting of Israel and the Palestinian side on arrangements to prevent any repetition of military action and to deal with the causes.

In Paris, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Israel and the moderate Palestinian Authority, Hamas' rival, accepted the plan. However, the Palestinian Authority is not a direct party to the conflict.

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