JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ruled out negotiations to free a captured Israeli soldier Monday as his nation's tanks and troops gathered along the Gaza Strip border in anticipation of an operation against Palestinian militants.

"This is not a matter of negotiations, this is not a matter of bargaining," Olmert told a group of Jewish leaders in Jerusalem. Cpl. Gilad Shalit, a dual French-Israeli citizen, was seized by Palestinian gunmen in a cross-border raid on Sunday.

Olmert said the attack and the capture of the soldier were evidence of extremist Muslim desires to destroy the state of Israel.

He said Israel withdrew "completely" from Gaza last year, and "anyone who fires from the other side of the border, anyone who caries out any attack against Israeli citizens, does so from a fanatical desire to destroy the Jewish state."

Earlier, Olmert called the troop deployment the beginning of a "broad and ongoing" operation against Palestinian militants...