Paris  - European Union foreign ministers on Tuesday discussed calling for a temporary ceasefire between Israel and the Islamic group Hamas to allow humanitarian aid into the embattled Gaza Strip, diplomatic sources said.

The discussion focused on the details of how long a ceasefire should last and how the combatants could move beyond it to a longer-lasting truce, diplomats said.

But Israel has already ruled out the idea of a 48-hour ceasefire as proposed by French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, a spokesman for caretaker prime minister Ehud Olmert said.

France, which currently holds the EU's rotating presidency, called for the emergency meeting of EU diplomats on Monday evening as a response to the spiralling violence in the Middle East.

The meeting opened as the so-called "Quartet" of Middle East mediators - the United Nations, EU, US and Russia - held a conference call on the outbreak of hostilities, and a day after French President Nicolas Sarkozy discussed the crisis in a telephone call with his Egyptian counterpart, Hosny Mubarak.

The EU's priority is to broker an end to the fighting and a return to a peace negotiated by Egyptian mediators in June, French officials said ahead of the Tuesday meeting.

In addition, the 27-member bloc is keen to see the Gaza Strip re-opened to humanitarian aid, cut off since Israel began its aerial bombardment of the salient on Saturday.

To that end, Kouchner and his German counterpart, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, called for a temporary ceasefire to allow aid workers into the strip in separate conversations with top Israeli, Egyptian and Syrian officials.

But on Tuesday a spokesman for Olmert ruled out the idea of a ceasefire.

"Giving Hamas a rest period to re-group and rearm, reducing the pressure on that organization, would be a mistake," spokesman Mark Regev told Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa)