JERUSALEM, Jan. 10 -- Israeli tanks edged closer Saturday to Gaza City and the Palestinian refugee camps where many Hamas leaders are based, as weary Gazans began to resign themselves to the possibility that fighting would continue indefinitely.

Israeli warplanes dropped leaflets over Rafah, in southern Gaza, and the Beach refugee camp outside Gaza City, warning Palestinians not to provide shelter to Hamas fighters and to prepare for an escalation in warfare. The Israeli military said it bombed more than 40 targets overnight.

Eight Palestinians were killed when an Israeli tank shell crashed outside a home in the Jabalya refugee camp, Gazan medical officials said. They said the death toll had risen to more than 820 since Israel began its military offensive Dec. 27.

Hamas fighters launched about 10 rockets into southern Israel on Saturday, the fewest since the fighting began. One rocket struck the city of Ashkelon, 12 miles north of Gaza, wounding three Israelis.

Israeli leaders have said they will not withdraw from Gaza until they are confident Hamas will no longer be able to attack Israeli towns with the crude rockets or other missiles.

Thirteen Israelis have died since the outbreak of hostilities, including three civilians struck by rocket fire and 10 soldiers.

Diplomats struggled to jump-start peace talks Saturday, a day after both Israel and Hamas rejected international pleas for a truce and backed away from a French-Egyptian plan to end the war.

In Cairo, Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, pressed Israeli and Hamas officials to sign onto the French-Egyptian proposal and warned of catastrophic consequences if the fighting escalated.

Abbas said both Hamas and Israel bore responsibility for the conflict, but he singled out Israel as responsible for hundreds of civilian casualties. "If Israel doesn't want to accept," he said of the cease-fire plan, "it will take the responsibility of perpetuating a waterfall of blood."

Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007 after a bloody battle with Abbas's Fatah party, which was kicked out but still controls the West Bank.

Israel has said it welcomed the French-Egyptian cease-fire proposal but negotiations over details have stalled.

Israel also dismissed a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for an immediate and lasting cease-fire, calling that plan "unworkable" because it lacked any guarantee that Hamas would stop firing rockets.

"The firing of rockets this morning only goes to show that the U.N. decision is unworkable and will not be adhered to by the murderous Palestinian organizations," Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Friday.

Hamas said it would not lay down its arms until Israel withdrew its troops and reopened border crossings into Gaza. Israel imposed an economic blockade on the coastal territory after Hamas's takeover.

Osama Hamdan, a Hamas representative in Beirut, said the group "is not interested in" the U.N. resolution "because it does not meet the demands of the movement."

Gazans on Friday voiced disappointment that the resolution had not stopped the fighting. "I told my family with lots of hope that this catastrophe would end," said Qassim al-Sayed, 60, who advises students at a university. "But the problem is the United States. They are always with Israel."

The fighting continued as Gazans tried to cope with miserable living conditions that got even worse. "We're back 100 years in 13 days," said Hanan Hanouna, a mother. "There's no electricity. For 10 days we haven't seen water to take a bath."

The unrelenting fighting, she said, had left her despondent. "I have no hope," she said. "You wake up in the morning and you only see death, you only hear death, until you sleep, if you can."

Hossam Zaki, a senior Egyptian Foreign Ministry official, said his government is resisting pressure to allow the deployment of foreign forces on its side of the border to prevent the smuggling of weapons to Hamas.

The Israeli military has said that Hamas smuggled 100 tons of weapons into Gaza last year through makeshift tunnels. Officials in Jerusalem have accused Egypt of turning a blind eye to the practice and said they won't agree to a cease-fire unless they are assured the smuggling will stop.

Zaki said the whole issue of "smuggling and arms trafficking has been entirely blown out of proportion."

"No foreign presence will be allowed at the border," he said. "This is something Egypt is not ready to accept."

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and other U.S. agencies last year began providing Egypt with technical help to patrol the border, including sonar equipment designed to locate tunnels. With more such aid, Zaki said, Egypt could patrol the border by itself.

Elsewhere, the United Nations said Friday that it would resume humanitarian-aid deliveries to Gaza, after officials said they received assurances from Israel that relief workers would not be targeted.

The U.N. Relief and Works Agency had suspended shipments Friday, a day after a U.N. driver was shot and killed, and another U.N. convoy of vehicles came under fire from Israeli forces, according to the agency.

The International Committee of the Red Cross also curtailed its aid programs Friday, limiting its work to Gaza City after officials said an ambulance driver came under fire.

Also Friday, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said it had confirmed reports of an extended family in the Zaytoun neighborhood south of Gaza City whose members had said they suffered mass casualties after Israeli soldiers forced them into a single house.

The U.N. agency, citing interviews with eyewitnesses, said Israeli troops rounded up about 110 Palestinians and packed them into a large house in Zaytoun on Sunday. About 24 hours later, the house was shelled repeatedly and about 30 people inside were killed, the agency said, calling it "one of the gravest incidents" in Gaza since the fighting began.

Three other children in the house died after reaching a hospital, the U.N. agency said.

U.N. officials said they were unable to confirm whether the Israeli military was responsible for the shelling.

Military officials said Friday they had no record of having specifically targeted buildings in Zaytoun. But they acknowledged that there was significant fighting in the area at the time that several houses were destroyed, and did not deny that Israeli fire might have leveled the buildings. "There was a lot of fire with Hamas. It's a very dangerous area," said Maj. Jacob Dallal, an Israeli military spokesman.

In Geneva, Navanethem Pillay, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, called for an investigation into the case. "Credible, independent and transparent investigations must be carried out," she told an emergency meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Council. "Accountability must be ensured for violations of international law."

The Red Cross had previously accused the Israeli military of blocking its ambulances from reaching Zaytoun for four days, despite repeated specific requests to respond to distress calls from the neighborhood.

Dallal said the military had no record of having prevented ambulances from getting through to tend to the wounded, but that running battles may have had that effect. "We're dealing with a populated area that had been turned into a combat zone by Hamas," he said.

Raghavan reported from Cairo. Correspondent Griff Witte in Jerusalem and special correspondent Reyham Abdel Kareem in Gaza City contributed to this report.

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