The United States described reported Israeli plans to launch a major military operation into the Palestinian-run Gaza Strip on Monday as a 'self-defence' issue for the Jewish state alone to decide.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told legislators in Jerusalem on Monday that the army was "preparing for an even more extensive operation in the Gaza Strip" after four months of incursions that have left at least 260 Palestinians dead in the territory, a member of parliament said.
Asked about Olmert's remarks, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack refused to comment about Israeli military actions but put the issue in the context of the Jewish state's right to self-defence.
"It's a sovereign state, it doesn't seek or need the permission of the United States to act in its own self-defence," McCormack said. "We don't do stoplights here: Red, yellow or green."
The United States has in the past joined its partners in the so-called Quartet of Middle East peace brokers -- Russia, the European Union and the United Nations -- in urging Israelis and Palestinians to refrain from actions that could worsen tensions in the region.
McCormack linked the Israeli threat of wider operations in Gaza to the fate of an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, whose June 25 kidnapping by Palestinian militants just outside the Gaza Strip sparked the wave of Israeli incursions into the territory.
He called on the Palestinian Authority "to unconditionally release the soldier that is currently being held by groups or a group within the Palestinian areas".
In the latest violence in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday, a Palestinian man was killed and two others wounded by Israeli tank fire, according to medical officials.