JERUSALEM, Friday, May 18 — Israel moved a small number of tanks and soldiers over the Gaza border and hit Hamas with eight airstrikes on Thursday and early Friday, killing at least seven Palestinians, while five other Palestinians died in factional fighting despite a new cease-fire.

Some 14 rockets fired by Hamas militants in Gaza on Thursday landed in Israel, 6 of them near Sderot, a border town, the Israeli Army said. The government bused some Sderot residents to hotels in what it called a respite, not an evacuation.

Maj. Avital Leibovich of the Israeli Army said the tanks and soldiers in Gaza were in defensive positions a few hundred yards in to stop more rockets from being launched. She denied some Palestinian reports that the tanks had moved farther south and said there were no plans for reoccupation.

Khalil Noufal, a Hamas political leader, said his group’s military wing “has complete freedom to respond to the assassinations.” Hamas, he said, “has the right to defend ourselves at the right place and the suitable time.”

A spokesman for the military wing of Hamas threatened to renew suicide bombings in Israel, but his comments were not confirmed by more senior leaders.

Israeli aircraft continued to take aim at Hamas — its military wing and members of the Hamas-dominated Executive Force, a parallel paramilitary police unit that rivals the Fatah-dominated security forces in Gaza.

In the current factional fighting, which started five days ago, Hamas has generally bested Fatah, as it did in the last major outbreak in December. Using more professional tactics and clearly better motivated, Hamas fighters control northern Gaza and much of Gaza City.

But the new cease-fire appeared to be taking hold, despite factional clashes before noon. Gazans emerged on the streets to shop and to see neighbors.

The clashes included the killing by a sniper of a Hamas fighter guarding the Islamic University and an attack on a Hamas funeral for members of the Executive Force in Rafah, a southern Gazan town, in which two people were killed and 14 wounded. Hamas charged that Fatah members of Preventive Security had fired on the funeral, possibly retaliating for the killing of two Fatah men on Wednesday night. “The situation in Rafah is very bad now,” Islam Shahwan, a Hamas spokesman, said.

The Israeli airstrikes in Gaza City were aimed only at Hamas positions. The first was an administrative building of the Executive Force, Hamas said. One person was killed and as many as 40 were wounded.

The second strike hit a car carrying two Hamas officers on Al Gala Street, seriously wounding them, Al Shifa hospital said, though some news agencies said they had been killed. Hamas did not identify the officers except to say that one was a senior commander. Israel said it had been aiming at a rocket-firing squad.

A third strike hit a trailer housing security guards for the Interior Ministry spokesman, Khaled Abu Hilal, a Fatah member who opposed the 1993 Oslo accords with Israel and helped organize the Executive Force. The trailer was in front of Mr. Hilal’s house, also on Al Gala Street.

Israel made a fourth strike in the evening on a car near Rafah, Palestinian medics said. The hospital said later that one Palestinian teenager had died and four others had been wounded. The driver, the father of the dead teenager, had entered a shop before the rocket hit his truck. Again, some news agencies reported that the driver and two of his sons had been killed in the strike.

A fifth strike on a training base for Hamas’s armed wing may have killed at least two more Palestinians, Reuters reported, saying that officials were having trouble reaching the scene to make an accurate assessment.

Early Friday, three more airstrikes hit east of Gaza City and killed four Palestinians and wounded at least six, The Associated Press reported, citing reports by doctors.

Khaled Meshal, the exiled director of the Hamas political bureau, told Hamas television that the Israeli airstrikes created “an historic opportunity” to reunite Palestinian factions against Israel.

The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, postponed by at least a day a trip to Gaza to meet with Ismail Haniya, the Hamas prime minister. Aides said he wanted to ensure that his trip would coincide with an end to the fighting.

Maher Miqdad, a Fatah spokesman, said Hamas continued to attack Fatah men and installations, including the headquarters of the National Security forces in the north and members of the Preventive Security forces. “Since the agreement, Hamas hasn’t stopped attacking,” he said. “Today they were disguised wearing Presidential Guards and Al Aksa Brigades uniforms in order to start a kidnapping campaign against Fatah.”

Few cars, but many roadblocks and bursts of gunfire, were on the streets of Gaza. Few Gazans were convinced that the fighting was over.

Huda, 60, a widow, lives near the presidential compound in Gaza City, where many clashes have occurred. “We feel imprisoned by the fighting,” she said. “In my apartment, many bullets have come through the windows” and the electricity and water have been cut off.

She did not want to give her surname, but said that she had moved to the apartment of a friend farther from the bullets. “When Palestinians fight each other, it’s very depressing,” she said. “But when the Israelis bomb our feelings are very different, we feel that this is the enemy that we must have the will to challenge.”

The United States defended the Israeli attacks while urging an end to the factional violence. In Washington, Sean McCormack, the State Department spokesman, said Israel had the right to respond to rocket attacks from Hamas.

“Israel has the right to defend itself, and it has exercised great restraint in the face of these rocket attacks,” he told reporters, noting that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had called Mr. Abbas and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel.

Thursday was the 45th birthday of Alan Johnston, the BBC Gaza correspondent who was kidnapped on March 12. No evidence that he is alive has been found, but the Palestinian Authority insists that he is, and the group that says it holds him has made demands with a vaguely Islamic character. The BBC broadcast a birthday report for Mr. Johnston, including a message from his parents, in case he can hear a radio.

Taghreed El-Khodary contributed reporting from Aqaba, Jordan, and Safwat al-Kahlout from Gaza City.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company