RAMALLAH: Israeli Minister of Religious Affairs Yitzhak Cohen yesterday called for the assassination of Hamas leaders to stop rocket fire from Gaza Strip.
Cohen, who resides in the southern city of Ashkelon, said it was time to “remove Hamas leaders Khaled Meshaal, Mahmoud Al-Zahar and Ismail Haniyeh.”
“We must target the leadership that is responsible for harming innocent people and wants nothing but to destroy us,” the Israeli Radio quoted Cohen of ultra-orthodox Shas party as saying.
Outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed yesterday to hit back “severely” if Hamas continued to fire rockets into Israel.
“If the rocket fire from Gaza continues, we will hit back severely, so much so that they will understand that Israel is not ready to resign itself to this,” Olmert said at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting.
“At the end of the week, 11 rockets were fired against southern Israel,” he said. “Defense Minister Ehud Barak will give directions so that Israeli forces bring calm to southern Israel,” he added.
After he spoke, a rocket fired from Gaza slammed into empty ground south of the Israeli port city of Ashkelon, causing neither casualties nor damage, an Israeli military spokeswoman said.
On Saturday, seven rockets fired from Gaza landed in Israel without causing casualties although one smashed into an empty school. Olmert was speaking a day before an international conference on rebuilding Gaza is to be held in Egypt’s Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh.
President Shimon Peres told visiting Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere yesterday that the billions of dollars expected to be pledged to the Palestinians for rebuilding Gaza by world powers at the Egyptian conference should be given to the Palestinian Authority, not Hamas.
Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said prior to the Cabinet meeting that “Israel must respond and it will do so." Minister of Pensioner Affairs Rafi Eitan reiterated the sentiment, saying that “Israel cannot let things stand as they are, but we have to explore our response scenarios."
Minister for the Development of the Negev and Galilee Jacob Edery called the ongoing fire at the western Negev “unbearable” and urged the Cabinet to order a response without delay.
“We cannot allow the fact that this is a transit government to halt our actions,” he said.
Though Israel ended its major offensive into Gaza, it continued to strike at the tunnels area on the border between Egypt and Gaza Strip every now and then. According to official estimations, more than 1,300 Palestinians were killed and thousands of houses and buildings destroyed during the offensive.
