ISRAEL - Dec 27 - Israel To Renew Attacks On Gaza Rocket Squads.

The Israeli government orders the military to resume targeting militants spotted firing rockets from the Gaza Strip but said its month-long ceasefire with the Palestinians would otherwise remain in force. The government ended its policy of restraint in the face of cease-fire violations after one of eight rockets fired at Israel wounded two youths in the southern town of Sderot, one of them seriously. A statement said the military was authorised to make pinpoint strikes against Palestinian rocket squads, apparently ruling out a wide-ranging response that would scupper the truce agreed in late November. PM Ehud Olmert, had been under pressure from inside and outside his cabinet to end the policy of restraint in the face of continuing rocket attacks, many of them claimed by the Islamic Jihad movement, which has no political role in the PA. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for a solitary rocket that landed outside Sderot as harsh weather conditions and low visibility limited the Israeli military's options. Militant groups have justified continued rocket attacks as retaliation for Israeli operations in the West Bank, where top members of Islamic Jihad and the Fatah-linked Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades were seized in recent days. Dec 27 government statement said Israel would continue its policy of liaising with Palestinian security officials as part of efforts to stem the rocket fire. The ceasefire followed a big Israeli incursion into the Gaza Strip, the latest of a series of operations this year in which hundreds of Palestinians, many of them civilians, were killed, but which nevertheless failed to end the rocket attacks. A month of relative calm opened the way for a recent summit meeting between Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas, the PA president, at which the Israeli leader agreed to unfreeze $100m of Palestinian tax revenues, around one-sixth of the dues it has withheld since the Islamist Hamas movement came to power. The concessions offered to Abbas failed to stir much excitement in the Palestinian territories, where the summit had given rise to hopes that Israel might be ready to release large numbers of detainees and substantially ease restrictions on Palestinian movement. Abbas has established a committee to negotiate prisoner releases but its prospects are limited until Palestinian militants free Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier abducted in June. Visiting FM of Egypt Ahmad Aboul Gheit, which is closely involved in co-ordinating security in Gaza, said Egypt was working for Corporal Shalit's release. Olmert told Abbas that Israel would remove up to 27 of several hundred military checkpoints in the West Bank.