RAMALLAH (AFP) - Former US president Jimmy Carter said on Tuesday he wanted to visit the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on his current Middle East tour but stated that Israel refused to authorise the trip. "I haven't been able to get a permission to go to Gaza. I would like to. I asked for permission but I was turned down," Carter told reporters in Ramallah ahead of a meeting with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. Carter's nine-day sweep through the region has drawn fire from the United States and Israel, which have urged him not to go through with a planned face-to-face meeting with exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Damascus. Carter defended his decision to meet Meshaal, saying he hoped to help involve the movement in the current peace process. "I'm going to try everything I can to get him to agree to a peaceful resolution of differences both with the Israelis and with Fatah," he said, referring to Abbas's Fatah movement. "But I'm not a negotiator, I'm just trying to understand different options and communicate," he said. "If he has anything constructive to say, he or the Syrian president, then I would bring it to other people." The former president and his wife Rosalynn Carter laid a wreath on the tomb of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in Ramallah. The wreath bore the words: "President and Mrs Carter." Meanwhile, Israeli forces entered the southern Gaza Strip early on Tuesday and carried out searches accompanied by exchanges of fire and explosions, wounding at least five people, medics said. About 20 armoured vehicles accompanied by bulldozers and two helicopter gunships moved 1.5km inside the Hamas-controlled Strip near the Kissufim crossing point with Israel. They searched a school and other buildings in Al-Qarara and Wadi Al-Salqa. Israeli troops and Palestinian activists exchanged fire and a number of blasts were heard in the area. He added that three were wounded when an Israeli tank shell struck a house east of Al-Qarara village. In an earlier action Israeli aircraft raided the Maghazi refugee camp in the centre of the Gaza Strip Monday night, targeting members of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP). No one was wounded in the strike. A member of the DFLP's military wing was killed late on Monday and three other Palestinians were wounded in an Israeli air raid on the northern Gaza Strip, Palestinian medics said.