JERUSALEM -- A Palestinian sniper attacked an Israeli military patrol Wednesday along the border with the Gaza Strip, setting off a clash that left one Palestinian militant dead and an Israeli soldier wounded, officials said.
After a routine patrol on the Israeli side of the border came under fire, Israel responded with air and ground forces against Hamas positions in the immediate vicinity of the attack, the military said.
A spokesman for the Health Ministry of Gaza identified the Palestinian who was killed as Tayseer al-Samari, 33. The military wing of Hamas immediately claimed Samari as one of its own. It said he was the head of the group's reconnaissance unit in southern Gaza.
The Israeli military said a soldier from the Bedouin Reconnaissance Battalion suffered a serious chest injury.
Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the Israeli military, described the sniper attack in a statement as "a lethal violation of the relative quiet along the Gaza border" and "a blatant breach of Israel's sovereignty."
He added that the military would "continue to use all necessary means in order to maintain the safety of the citizens of southern Israel and will not hesitate to respond to any attempt to harm [Israeli Defense Forces] soldiers."
The military said it had instructed Israeli farmers in border communities "to evacuate the area for their personal safety until further notice."
Hamas held Israel responsible for the deadly clash.
"This is a dangerous escalation," said Ismail Radwan, a Hamas official in Gaza.
"The occupation is playing with fire," Radwan said, referring to Israel, "and it will bear full responsibility for the consequences."
Hamas evacuated its police stations and other institutions in Gaza City, as well as elsewhere in the Gaza Strip, in anticipation of further Israeli airstrikes.
Radwan called on Egypt, which brokered the cease-fire in late August, to intervene and "curb the aggression and the violations" by Israel.
Tensions have been building since Gaza militants fired a rocket into Israeli territory Friday and Israel carried out a retaliatory airstrike against a Hamas site in Gaza. It was the first such exchange since a cease-fire that ended a 50-day war between Israel and Hamas in August.
Israeli officials said that rocket was probably not fired by Hamas but by a smaller militant group; Israel nevertheless said it held Hamas accountable.
Israeli officials later said the target of the airstrike was a factory producing concrete meant for the rehabilitation of the Hamas tunnels that Israel destroyed or damaged during the war.
More than 2,100 Palestinians were killed in the summer's fighting, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Sixty-seven Israeli soldiers and six civilians in Israel were killed.
The cease-fire that halted the summer war was supposed to have been followed by further Egypt-mediated talks to reach more lasting understandings between Israel and Hamas and longer-term solutions for Gaza.
Those talks have not taken place, and reconstruction efforts in Gaza have had a slow start, adding to an increasing sense of frustration among Gaza's population.
Robert Turner, the director of operations in Gaza for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which assists Palestinian refugees, said last week that more than 96,000 homes were damaged or destroyed during the summer -- many more than initially estimated.
Palestinians have said a mechanism for importing construction materials into Gaza that meets Israel's security requirements and is supervised by the United Nations has proved cumbersome.
And though an international donors' conference in Cairo in October garnered $5.4 billion in pledges for the reconstruction of Gaza, Mohammed Mustafa, the Palestinian deputy prime minister for economic affairs, said the disbursement of funds to the Palestinian Authority had been sparse.
In a telephone interview, Mushir al-Masri, a Hamas official in Gaza, said, "Gaza is under pressure, and this will lead to a big explosion.
"We don't want to push into a new war, but the Israelis will not be safe as long as our people are not safe," he said.
Giora Eiland, an Israeli general in the reserves and a former national security adviser, said: "Hamas is preparing itself, and so are we. It is clear we did not reach eternal peace with them, and this is why they are preparing militarily."
"What is more worrying," he told Israel Radio, "are incidents when they fire, like today, with an element of provocation and they take into account that it could lead to escalation."
Eiland said that if the more advanced talks had been taking place in Cairo, "I assume Hamas would have less of an interest in being provocative."
Information for this article was contributed by Majd Al Waheidi of The New York Times.
A Section on 12/25/2014