Israel's top leaders will debate Tuesday whether to pursue a truce with Hamas' Gaza rulers or embark on a broad military operation against Palestinian militants who torment southern Israel with rocket and mortar barrages. For months, Egypt has been trying to broker a truce between the two sides in an effort to halt the deadly cycle of militant attacks on southern Israel, followed by Israeli air and ground strikes on the Gaza Strip. But the cease-fire efforts have faltered over Israel's demand that Hamas free an Israeli soldier captured two years ago and Hamas' demand that Israel lift a blockade that has confined Gazans to their tiny seaside territory and deepened their poverty.

Although it has long threatened to launch a large-scale incursion against Gaza militants, Israel has limited its military operations to pinpoint strikes. A broad campaign carries the risk of high Israeli military and Palestinian civilian casualties, which has been the major deterrent.

But with four Israelis killed so far this year, Israel's leadership is under domestic pressure to do something about the near-daily assaults on its territory. On Tuesday, Israel's leading troika - Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni - is to sit down to discuss what course to take.

Hanging over their discussion will be a new corruption probe against Olmert, which threatens to topple him and possibly his government. Both Livni and Barak are working to unseat Olmert, but a Gaza operation could put any political maneuvers on hold.

Just before they meet, the full Cabinet will devote part of its weekly session to discussing Gaza, and ministers with security responsibilities are to hold further talks on Gaza on Wednesday. Four rockets and four mortars were fired from Gaza at nearby Israeli communities early Tuesday, but no casualties were reported, the military said.

This week, Hamas will mark the first anniversary of its violent takeover of the coastal strip from security forces affiliated with moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The Islamic militant group, which has killed more than 250 Israelis in suicide attacks, rejects the Jewish state's right to exist, but has said publicly that it is interested in a truce to rearm and regroup.

Hamas recently allowed the captured Israeli soldier to write a third letter to his parents, making good on their promise to former President Jimmy Carter during his visit to the region in April. Carter representatives delivered the letter to Cpl. Gilad Schalit's parents on Monday.

On Tuesday, Israel's Yediot Ahronot newspaper cited Schalit's father, Noam, as saying that the soldier asked in the letter to be rescued and pleaded for his life.

Schalit has not been seen since he was seized in a cross-border raid in June 2006. An audio recording of his voice and two other letters he wrote have been released.

Senior Defense Ministry official Amos Gilad, Israel's representative to the Gaza truce talks, told Israel's Army Radio on Tuesday that he saw no connection between the release of the letter and the Israeli leadership's scheduled meetings on Gaza.

While battling militants in Gaza, Israel has been trying to pursue peace with moderate Palestinians in the West Bank, led by Abbas. The peace talks resumed at a U.S.-sponsored conference in November, after seven years of violence.

Over the weekend, chief Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qureia said the two sides have begun writing down their positions on issues that have scuttled previous peace talks - final borders, the fate of disputed Jerusalem and a solution for Palestinian refugees who lost their homes after Israel's 1948 creation.

But frictions that have derailed past peace talks have resurged this time, too, and little has changed on the ground for Palestinians or Israelis since the negotiations began. Both sides have cast doubt on their declared goal of reaching a final peace accord by the end of the year.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (web|news|bio) is due in the region again this week to assess progress after six months of negotiations.