JERUSALEM, May 1: A senior Israeli minister rejected on Thursday a proposed truce in the Gaza Strip, as the air force killed a Hamas commander suspected of involvement in the 2006 capture of an Israeli soldier.

Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit insisted that Israel could not accept an Egyptian-brokered proposal on Gaza, claiming it would only give the Islamist movement Hamas the opportunity to boost its military capabilities.

“No deal whatsoever should be reached with Hamas because this movement would exploit any truce to gain strength, perfect its weapons and prepare for the next confrontation,” the security cabinet member told public radio.

Sheetrit’s comments came as the air force “targeted and identified hitting Nafiz Mansur, a Hamas operative who was involved in attacks against Israel,” the military said.

The military said Mansur had been involved in the capture of Israeli Corporal Gilad Shalit, seized by Palestinian militants in a cross-border raid from Gaza claimed by Hamas and two other militant groups.

It said Mansur was also responsible for the killing of two Israeli soldiers in a July 2006 attack, and took part in setting up a suicide assault on a border post on April 19.

Hamas confirmed Mansur’s death and said it would “respond to this crime at the appropriate time and place.” Mansur, 40, was killed near his home in Rafah, according to Muawiyah Hassanein, who heads the Gaza emergency services. Three more people, including a child, were wounded in the air strike, he said.

Following the strike, Gaza militants retaliated, firing at least eight rockets and three mortar rounds at southern Israel. The attacks caused some damage to property but no casualties, a military spokeswoman said.

In the face of the near-daily violence on its doorstep, Egypt has again stepped in as a mediator in the impoverished Palestinian territory.

It brought together Hamas, the Fatah party of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and nearly a dozen other factions, hammering out with them a proposal for a “comprehensive, simultaneous and reciprocal period of calm to be applied progressively, first in Gaza and then in the West Bank.” The pointman in the talks, intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, is expected to deliver the offer to Israel in the coming days.

Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev has already said that “to be sustainable and real, the calm must contain three vital elements — total absence of fire from Gaza against Israel, complete cessation of terrorist attacks and the end of arms smuggling into the Gaza Strip.” Hamas has insisted that, as part of any truce, Israel must lift the blockade it imposed after the Islamists seized power in Gaza in June.

Israel allows only very limited humanitarian supplies to enter Gaza. It says the blockade is intended to put pressure on the Hamas authorities to stop militants firing rockets on its territory.

In another Israeli military operation in Gaza on Thursday, a Palestinian civilian in his sixties, Mohammed Abu Daqqa, was killed and three other people wounded, Palestinian medics said.

The deaths brought to 447 the number of people killed since Israel and the Palestinians relaunched peace negotiations at a US-hosted conference in November.—AFP