Agence France-Presse,
JERUSALEM: Israel's top brass warned on Tuesday that its patience was wearing thin over rocket fire from the Gaza Strip, as more people were wounded in army incursions into the Hamas-run territory.
Amid growing calls for an all-out assault on the impoverished strip, Defence Minister Ehud Barak said the armed forces would do whatever is necessary to stop the attacks.
“Israel will not refrain from taking any course of action in order to bring a stop to the fire against Sderot,” Barak said, referring to the southern town that has borne the brunt of rocket fire.
“There are reasons why we are not using all our force right now, but it will happen at the right moment,” he told journalists travelling with him to Turkey, without elaborating.
On Monday, army chief Lieutenant General Gaby Ashkenazi said the army was “prepared and ready to broaden its actions in conformity with the decisions taken.”
The military has conducted a series of deadly operations in Gaza over the past week after a suicide bombing in Israel that was claimed by Hamas, a group blacklisted as a terrorist outfit by the European Union and the United States.
Israel has also tightened its blockade on the isolated territory, allowing in only limited supplies of fuel and medicines to a 1.5 million population largely dependent on aid.
On Monday, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israeli “forces have been authorised to act to change the situation so that the inhabitants of Sderot and other Israeli towns targeted by Palestinian rockets can live in security.
“It will not happen in a single day. It will need time, but I believe it is possible.”
In the meantime, Israeli forces continued operations against militants on Tuesday. Seven Palestinians — militants and civilians — were hit during a pre-dawn firefight with an infantry unit in Gaza City, witnesses said.
A soldier was lightly wounded in the same operation, an army spokesman said.
Two more Palestinians were hurt when soldiers opened fire while searching houses during an incursion in the central town of Deir al-Balah, witnesses said. An army spokesman confirmed the shootings.
Calls for a full-scale assault have been spurred by persistent rocket fire at southern Israel from Gaza, and Olmert warned on Sunday that no one from the Islamist movement was immune.
But on Tuesday, Israeli novelist and veteran peace activist Amos Oz warned that an all-out invasion of the territory could be “catastrophic” and would fail to halt the rocket fire.
“Such an operation would change nothing, given that rocket fire was happening when we controlled the Gaza Strip,” Oz told public radio, referring to Israel's 38-year military presence that ended in summer 2005.
“There would certainly be a political price to pay in agreeing to a ceasefire with Hamas,” Oz added. “But I consider it better to pay that price than a military operation in Gaza, which could be catastrophic.”
A Hamas official, writing in Israel's Haaretz newspaper, also called for a longterm ceasefire while blaming Israel for the escalation in violence.
“If the people of Sderot want to know why rockets continue to land around them, they should ask their own government why it has continually rejected our calls for a ceasefire and continued its policy of daily incursions and reckless targeting that put the whole population at risk,” Ahmed Yussef wrote.
A spokesman for Hamas, which seized control of Gaza in June, said its leaders were taking precautions in light of the Israeli threats but denied they had gone underground.
“These threats are not going to force us to go underground or to disappear from the scene, but certain precautions and security measures must be taken,” Ismail Radwan told AFP.
