Israel may halt Gaza war, ignore Hamas demands
* Israel moving toward ceasefire, cool to Hamas demands
* Doctor's desperate call to Israeli TV
By Nidal al-Mughrabi
GAZA, Jan 17 (Reuters) - Israeli leaders were preparing to order a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, possibly as early as Saturday evening, political sources said.
They may declare a halt to the three-week-old offensive without concluding any deal with Hamas-led militants.
More than 1,150 Palestinians have been killed and 5,000 wounded since Israel began attacking Gaza with an air blitz on Dec. 27, then moved in with ground forces a week later.
A large majority of the dead were civilians.
Ten Israeli soldiers have died in the fighting and three Israeli civilians have been killed by rockets fired from Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was due to convene his security cabinet on Saturday night to decide on a ceasefire.
Word could come less than 72 hours before the inauguration of Barack Obama as U.S. president. Some say Israel wants to avoid casting a cloud over a historic moment for its main ally.
Israeli support for the offensive has been almost total. But international calls for an end to the bloodshed are mounting and the despair of Gaza civilians is harrowing.
Israeli television on Friday broadcast desperate cries for help from a Palestinian doctor in Gaza after his children were killed in an Israeli attack.
"I want to know why they were killed, who gave the order?" gynaecologist Izz el-Deen Aboul Aishhe cried in a voice shaking with emotion.
Troops later helped the family's survivors.
NO NEED FOR DEAL?
Dismissing notions of "proportionate" response, Israel struck on Dec. 27 with a "shock and awe" night of bombing and has used devastating firepower every day since to stop militants shooting rockets at border towns.
The rockets have tapered off but not ceased. On Friday at least 15 rockets and mortar shells hit Israel, wounding five.
Israeli strikes on Friday killed 30 Gazans, including an Islamic Jihad commander in southern Khan Younis. Israeli tank fire hit the home of a Hamas militant, killing his wife and five children. The militant was not there at the time.
About 45,000 Gazans fleeing the fighting have taken refuge in U.N.-run schools in the enclave, U.N. officials said.
Israeli officials said Egypt's mediation with Hamas is not progressing. But Israel may believe it has "taught Hamas a lesson", as Olmert put its aims, and prefers just to stop now rather than give Hamas the satisfaction of a negotiated deal.
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, hoping to replace Olmert as prime minister when Israel votes on Feb. 11, said an on Friday that an end to the war "doesn't have to be in agreement with Hamas but rather in arrangements against Hamas".
She was speaking in Washington after signing a security pact with outgoing U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice aimed at cutting off Hamas weapons supplies.
Hamas's exiled leader Khaled Meshaal called Israel's ceasefire terms unacceptable. Demanding an end to the punitive Israeli blockade of Gaza, he said Hamas would fight on.
Hamas negotiators, however, were due to meet the Egyptians on Saturday to discuss Israel's response to their conditions.
Hamas offers a one-year, renewable truce on condition that all Israeli forces withdraw within a week and that all the border crossings with Israel and Egypt are opened.
Except for limited humanitarian supplies, the crossings have been all but closed under an Israeli-led blockade since Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007 from Palestinian factions it had defeated in a parliamentary election the previous year.
Israel will not deal directly with the Islamist movement, which is also shunned by the West for its refusal to recognise the Jewish state, renounce violence and accept past peace deals.
(Writing by Douglas Hamilton; editing by Angus MacSwan)
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