REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, GAZA/JERUSALEM - Israel said on Sunday it was prepared for protracted military action in Gaza and would not negotiate under rocket fire as Egypt crafted a new truce plan to try to keep indirect Israeli-Palestinian talks alive.

Israeli air strikes and shelling killed three Palestinians in Gaza, including a boy of 14 and a woman, medics said, in a third day of renewed fighting that has jeopardized efforts by Egypt, which also borders the enclave, to end the month-old hostilities.

Since a three-day truce expired on Friday, Palestinian rocket and mortar salvoes have focused on Israeli kibbutzim, or collective farms, just across the border in what appeared to be a strategy of sapping the Jewish state's morale without triggering another ground invasion of the tiny Gaza Strip.

A month of war has killed 1,893 Palestinians and 67 Israelis while devastating wide tracts of small, densely populated Gaza. But international pressure for a ceasefire has been weaker than in earlier rounds of Israeli-Palestinian conflict given other international security crises distracting major powers.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters that Egypt had presented a new ceasefire plan to keep negotiations going. Israeli representatives had flown home on Friday, hours before the previous truce ended, and Palestinian delegates threatened to leave unless they came back.

An Egyptian Foreign Ministry source said the new 72-hour ceasefire plan was still being crafted and it was too early to say if a deal would result.

"The Palestinian delegation will give its position in light of the Egyptian efforts and developments within hours,” Azzam Ahmed, an official from the mainstream Fatah movement who is leading the Palestinian team, told reporters in Cairo.

Ahmed accused Israel of intransigence and said the Palestinians were willing to continue talks aimed at achieving a lasting truce and facilitating aid to the devastated enclave, where thousands of homes lie in ruin.

In Tel Aviv earlier, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said "Israel will not negotiate under fire".

"At no stage did we declare (Israel's military offensive) was over," he said. "The operation will continue until its objective - the restoration of quiet over a protracted period - is achieved," he said in public remarks at the weekly cabinet meeting. "I said at the beginning and throughout the operation - it will take time, and stamina is required."

Ikuti Whatsapp Channel Republika