PM Ehud Olmert warns that Israel could soon opt for a major military operation in Gaza to try to stop rocket and mortar fire from the area that has killed three Israelis in the past month. Landing in Israel after a brief visit to Washington, Olmert told reporters that he was still considering the

alternative option: an Egyptian-brokered temporary cease-fire with Hamas, the Islamic group that controls Gaza, and other militant organizations there. But "based on the data as I see it now", he said, "the pendulum is closer to a decision for a serious operation". The Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, also hinted late June 6 of an imminent army operation, saying that it was "closer than ever". He suggested that one was necessary before any cease-fire. There have been plans for broad military action for months. In the winter, military officials said they were waiting for weather conditions to improve. In the meantime Egypt has been trying to broker understandings for calm. Israel demands that any cease-fire arrangement include a halt to weapons-smuggling from Egypt into Gaza. Hamas wants Israel to stop mounting strikes and incursions in the area and to ease the economic blockade that it has imposed. Thousands of Palestinians demonstrated near the Rafah crossing on the Gaza-Egypt border on June 6 afternoon to protest its closure. Israel worries that Hamas will exploit a period of calm to build up its strength, and most of the cabinet seems to be leaning toward the military option. But military officials have warned that a large-scale action could cost many lives on both sides and prove indecisive. In Gaza, Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for Hamas, said that "Olmert's threats" were "proof" that the US had given "a green light to launch a new round in the war against Gaza". Referring to a new corruption investigation against the Israeli PM, Abu Zuhri told Reuters that a large military operation would lead to Olmert's downfall "not because of the scandals but because of the graves of his soldiers that will have to be dug". In more tough talk in Israel, Shaul Mofaz, a deputy PM and minister of transportation, told the Yediot Aharonot newspaper that "if Iran continues its program to develop nuclear weapons, we will attack it". Mofaz, a former defense minister and army chief, said that sanctions were not effective. He was the first senior member of the Israeli government to threaten Iran so overtly. This past week, FM Tzipi Livni said that it was important to keep a military option against Iran on the table, but that the clearer the point was made to Tehran, the less chance it would have to be used. Iran insists that its nuclear program is for civilian purposes only. An Israeli attack on Iran would risky and difficult, according to experts here, because of the long distances involved, the need to hit several targets and the threat of retaliation, which some fear could include nonconventional terrorism. Mofaz is a candidate to replace Olmert at the helm of the ruling Kadima party in the event of the PM's downfall. This past week Mofaz took a hard line on the indirect talks now under way between Israel and Syria, rejecting the idea of returning the Golan Heights, a strategic territory Israel seized in the 1967 war, in return for a peace deal.