US envoy George Mitchell said on Thursday that opening the Gaza Strip to commercial goods would help to choke off the smuggling that Israel fears could replenish Hamas’s weapons stocks.

But he said the Palestinian Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas must help to supervise the crossings, a demand that has been a major sticking point in Egyptian-brokered negotiations with the Gaza Strip’s Hamas rulers for a long-term ceasefire.

“To be successful in preventing the illicit traffic of arms into Gaza, there must be a mechanism to allow the flow of legal goods, and that should be with the participation of the Palestinian Authority,” Mitchell said after meeting Abbas.

Abbas’s Western-backed Palestinian Authority holds sway only in the West Bank after Hamas wrested control of the Gaza Strip from his Fatah movement in fighting in 2007.

Rocket attacks from Gaza and Israeli air strikes over the past two days have threatened to undermine Mitchell’s efforts to consolidate a fragile truce between Israel and Hamas that went into effect on January 18, ending 22 days of fighting.

Militants launched one rocket from Gaza into Israel late on Wednesday — the first since the January 18 ceasefire — and another on Thursday. No one was hurt.

Israeli aircraft then struck in the southern Gaza Strip, attacking a metal workshop that the military called a weapons factory, causing no casualties; and a motorcycle, wounding two militants and 10 youths passing by, medical workers said.

US President Barack Obama dispatched Mitchell on his week-long mission in an early signal of the new administration’s commitment to promote Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

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