Israel will not allow a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Sunday as troops pushed deep into the Islamist Hamas-ruled enclave.

"Israel is not fighting against the Palestinian people in Gaza," Olmert said at the start of a weekly cabinet meeting.

"They are not our enemies. They too are victims of the deadly violence and the deadly oppression of the same terror organisation," he said, referring to the Hamas rulers of the enclave.

"We will not allow a humanitarian crisis to develop in the Gaza Strip. We will help supply food and medicine for the territory, which Israel has kept virtually sealed off since Hamas took control in June 2007."

Olmert said the ground offensive Israel launched late on Saturday after a week-long aerial and naval bombing blitz of Hamas targets in Gaza was "unavoidable".

"I draw a lot of encouragement from the position of US President (George W.) Bush, who told me we must ensure that Hamas not only stops rocket fire, but also that it will not be able to resume it in the future," he said.

"Not interested" in opening up a new front

Meanwhile, Olmert also said that Israel is "not interested" in opening up a new front in the north in a veiled reference to Lebanon's Hezbollah militia.

"Israel has no interest in opening new fronts other than the one in the south," Olmert said at the same cabinet meeting. "Not to the east and not to the north."

He added: "But caution is required, and I have therefore instructed the defence establishment to be extremely alert and prepared for any development in the event that someone might think that this is his opportunity to take advantage of Israel focusing on the southern front in order to try and change the stable reality created following events in the past."

Olmert's comments were a thinly veiled reference to Lebanon's Hezbollah militia with which Israel fought a war in 2006 just weeks into Israel's last major offensive against the Gaza Strip.

Two weeks after Israel launched its assault on Gaza in June 2006 — after militants in the territory seized a soldier in a cross-border raid — Hezbollah launched a deadly cross-border raid of its own in Israel's north and seized two soldiers.

In response Israel unleashed a war on Hezbollah that lasted for 34 days and killed more than 1200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and more than 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers.

AFP