Israeli Leader Defends Incursion Into Gaza

Airstrikes Kill Six More Palestinians; Call for Prisoner Exchange Is Renewed

JERUSALEM, July 10 -- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Monday defended his decision to send tanks and troops into the Gaza Strip to force the release of a captured soldier and end rocket fire into southern Israel, dismissing as unfair recent European criticism that Israel used disproportionate force.

The military operation in Gaza has killed more than 40 Palestinians, most of them gunmen, in the past two weeks while Cpl. Gilad Shalit remains in the hands of the three armed groups that captured him June 25 in a cross-border raid on his army post. An Israeli soldier was also killed in the fighting in northern Gaza, the primary area used by Palestinians targeting southern Israel with rockets.

Olmert said Monday that "we haven't set any timetable for this operation," which he indicated would continue until Shalit is released and the rocket fire ceases. Palestinian hospital officials said four Israeli airstrikes Monday killed at least six Palestinians, among them three teenagers who witnesses said were not gunmen.

Among the groups holding Shalit, 19, is the military wing of the radical Hamas movement that has day-to-day control of the Palestinian government. Shalit's captors have demanded that Israel release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, about 400 women and minors first among them, in exchange for Shalit.

Olmert appeared Monday to rule out a prisoner exchange, at least through negotiations with Hamas, saying it would undermine the moderate Palestinian political leadership represented by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, who is trying to revive peace talks with Israel.

Israeli officials have indicated in recent days that Olmert had intended, before the Shalit crisis began, to hand over some prisoners to Abbas, known commonly as Abu Mazen, following a still-unscheduled summit. Olmert said handing over Palestinian prisoners to Hamas, which does not recognize the Jewish state's right to exist, would reward the armed groups at war with Israel at Abbas's expense.

"To negotiate with Hamas, to surrender to their demands and trade off prisoners with Corporal Shalit means you don't need more moderate guys like Abu Mazen, who is opposed to terror, because at the end of the day the upper hand will always be with the terrorists and killers and those who support violence," Olmert said at a news conference in Jerusalem.

Later Monday, the exiled leader of Hamas's political wing, Khaled Mashal, endorsed a prisoner exchange for Shalit's release and blamed Israel for the collapse of Egyptian diplomatic efforts to broker such a deal.

Olmert called Mashal, whom Israeli officials say they believe may have ordered the June 25 raid, a "terrorist with blood on his hands. He is not a legitimate partner for anything."

"Our solution is simple -- an exchange -- but Israel refuses that," Mashal said at a news conference in Damascus, Syria. "I do not exaggerate when I say that Olmert and his hostile policies are holding Gilad Shalit. He shoulders the responsibility for what is happening to him."

Olmert said Israel's military operation in Gaza was not an attempt to topple the government of Hamas, which rose to power in January parliamentary elections. But he called it a "terrorist government," and Israeli military officials have indicated that the incursion, mass arrests of Hamas lawmakers and airstrikes are designed in part to weaken Hamas's hold on the government it has run for a little more than three months.

In recent days, the European Union has criticized Israel's ground incursion, the first since Israel evacuated its settlements and bases from Gaza last fall, as a disproportionate use of military power.

Responding to the Europeans, Olmert said: "What exactly is the criteria by which one measures the proportion of more than a thousand missiles shot at innocent civilians against the measures taken by the state of Israel in the past few days? When was the last time that the European Union condemned this shooting, and suggested measures, effective measures, to stop it?"

Olmert, who was elected on a pledge to withdraw from parts of the West Bank and set Israel's final borders, said neither Shalit's capture nor the rocket fire would "stop the inevitable historical process of separation between Israel and the Palestinians."

"It is the only solution for the Palestinians," he said. "It's the only way in which Palestinians can hope to realize their dreams of a Palestinian state. And it is the only way we can secure the borders that will provide the necessary protection for Israelis."