Olmert: Israel will take "strong action" to ensure quiet from Gaza

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed on Sunday to take "strong action" to stop Gaza militants from attacking Israel, clouding an upcoming visit by an Egyptian mediator laboring to wring a truce from the warring sides.

Olmert spoke just hours before the funeral of a 48-year-old father of four killed Friday when a mortar fired from Gaza struck his home in southern Israel. The prime minister held Gaza's Islamic militant Hamas rulers responsible for the man's death and said the situation in Gaza "must change."

"Either there will be quiet or Israel will take strong action that eventually will bring quiet," he said at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting.

Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman is due to arrive in Israel on Monday, an Israeli government official confirmed Sunday. For months, Suleiman has been trying to broker a truce between Israel and Hamas.

Israel has never openly acknowledged it is involved in truce efforts, saying the lull would give gunmen committed to Israel's destruction time to rearm and train for renewed hostilities. However, Olmert also has said Israel would halt its fire if militants stop their attacks.

"Omar Suleiman will come and we will listen to him, we'll talk and we'll see what he is recommending," Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai told Army Radio on Sunday. "Until this moment there is nothing on the table open for discussion."

Israeli military officials have said privately that Suleiman would not bother coming to Israel unless he was trying to put the final touches on a cease-fire deal.

Palestinian militants frequently shoot crude rockets and mortars into southern Israel from Gaza, and on Sunday, rockets exploded at a local college, a high tech factory and a schoolbus, causing damage but no injuries, the Israeli army said. Earlier in the day, a Hamas militant died in an explosion near Gaza's border fence with Israel, apparently when explosives went off prematurely.

The militant attacks, which have killed 14 Israelis since late 2001, often provoke harsh Israeli airstrikes and ground incursions. Recent hostilities have ebbed since more than 120 Palestinians died in a a broad Israeli military offensive two months ago.

As a condition of a cease-fire, Hamas wants Israel to end its blockade of Gaza, which is meant to pressure the group to stop Palestinian militants from firing their salvos into Israel. Israel has not signaled readiness to do that.

The blockade has included a sharp cutback in the fuel that Israel provides to Gaza, which relies 100 percent on Israeli fuel supplies. Citing a lack of fuel, a major Gaza energy supplier turned off its turbines on Saturday, cutting off electricity to hundreds of thousands of Gazans.

Gaza City residents awoke Sunday to shuttered bakeries, shaky phone lines and stilled elevators. Some relief came from Israel's electricity grid, which provided about six hours of power to the area affected by the blackout.

It was not immediately clear if the power station had actually run out of fuel. The Israeli government accused Hamas of orchestrating an artificial crisis.

Suleiman arrives in Israel just two days before U.S. President George W. Bush lands to join in Israel's 60th Independence Day celebrations. Olmert said cryptically in his remarks to Cabinet that the discussion of "substantive, strategic issues" would "certainly be an inseparable part of his visit here."

Troubled peacemaking with moderate Palestinians in the West Bank is sure to top the agenda, along with Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been more vocal lately in his criticism of continued Israeli construction on lands the Palestinians claim for a future state. He has also denounced Israel's refusal to significantly scale back its network of roadblocks in the West Bank, which have hobbled efforts to revive the devastated Palestinian economy. Israel says the roadblocks are necessary security measures.

Israel says the Palestinians haven't done enough to curb West Bank militants and has insisted repeatedly that no peace deal can be implemented as long as the violently anti-Israel Hamas rules Gaza _ a situation that shows no sign of changing. Abbas says things have to improve for Palestinians in the West Bank to motivate Gazans to champion moderation..

The White House said over the weekend that the latest police investigation into Olmert's financial dealings would not affect the Bush visit because the probe was an internal matter. Police suspect Olmert broke campaign funding laws by accepting envelopes stuffed with hundreds of thousands in dollars in cash from a Jewish American businessman before he became prime minister in 2006.