Israel ? Israel’s foreign minister threatened Monday to keep hitting Hamas as long as it attacks Israel, ruling out negotiations with the Islamic rulers of Gaza just eight days before national elections in which she is running for prime minister.

Tzipi Livni’s tough statement came as a Hamas delegation went to Cairo for talks today with Egyptian mediators on a long-term truce with Israel, building on a two-week informal cease-fire that followed Israel’s bruising offensive in Gaza.

Events Monday underlined the urgency of the talks in Cairo. An Israeli missile hit a car in the town of Rafah, killing a Palestinian militant, hours after warplanes bombed the nearby Gaza-Egypt border seeking to destroy tunnels that Hamas uses to smuggle in weapons and supplies.

The Israeli military said the target of the airstrike was a car carrying militants who fired mortars at Israel. Palestinian officials said a militant in the car was killed and another was wounded.

The attacks were retaliation for more than a dozen rockets and mortar shells fired from Gaza on Sunday. The fire decreased considerably Monday, with the military saying that two mortar shells exploded at a border crossing in southern Gaza during the day.

But today, police said, a long-range Grad rocket from Gaza landed in Ashkelon, an Israeli city of 122,000 people.