Israeli planes struck targets in Gaza on Wednesday, hours after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas gave the Hamas government 48 hours to accept a manifesto implicitly recognizing Israel or face a referendum on the issue.
Abbas had set a Tuesday deadline for Hamas to embrace the manifesto on Palestinian statehood but delayed a showdown after what officials said were appeals by Arab leaders. Abbas gave Hamas another 48 hours.
In the first clash since Abbas's move, a Hamas gunman was seriously wounded in an exchange with rival Fatah fighters in Gaza city early on Wednesday, medics said.
It was not clear the reason for the exchange but both Hamas and Fatah sources accused each other of initiating it.
Amid mounting tension in the impoverished coastal strip, an Israeli military spokeswoman said an Israeli aerial attack targeted a building used by the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), an umbrella group of militants, to manufacture and store rockets in Gaza City.
A PRC source said militants managed to escape from the building before the missiles were fired. There were no casualties.
The source added that the site was a training base and not a rocket plant.
Separately, the spokeswoman said the Israeli air force carried out two air strikes in northern Gaza on access routes used by militants to get to a rocket firing area. Palestinian medics said no casualties were reported.
On Tuesday, militants fired nine rockets into Israel, one of which slightly injured a woman in the Israeli town of Sderot, which is close to Gaza.
Last year Israel withdrew its troops and dismantled 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza. In recent months militants have continued to fire rocket salvoes into Israel from Gaza.
The Israeli military has stepped up artillery barrages and airstrikes on sites in Gaza used by militants to fire homemade rockets into Israel. The rockets rarely cause casualties.
REFERENDUM BID
Hamas, an Islamic militant group, convincingly beat Abbas's Fatah in January elections and has been locked in a power struggle with the president ever since. It rejects the manifesto on statehood drawn up by Palestinians in Israeli jails.
A referendum, with opinion polls suggesting most Palestinians support the manifesto, would also be seen as a confidence vote on the Hamas government, whose election led the West and Israel to cut off funds to the Palestinian Authority.
A Fatah official told Reuters Egyptian security officials were due to hold a meeting later on Wednesday in Gaza with senior Hamas and Fatah leaders aiming to bring a halt to internal violence and growing lawlessness.
On Tuesday, three mortar bombs were fired at a Gaza compound of the Preventive Security service, which is loyal to Abbas. Two officers and four maintenance men were wounded, a spokesman for the force said. Five Palestinian bystanders were killed in crossfire in incidents on Sunday.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will fly to Amman on Wednesday to meet Jordan's King Abdullah.
Abdullah aims to push Olmert to revive stalled Arab-Israeli peace talks through international mediation, Jordanian officials said.
Olmert has planned to set Israel's final borders, through a unilateral pullback from parts of the occupied West Bank, if peacemaking with the Palestinians remains frozen.