JPost."We will not give special consideration to anyone"...

PM to cabinet: We will get all perpetrators of terror
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondent, and News Agencies

"We will get all the perpetrators of terror, their superiors, their operators and their masterminds. We will not give special consideration to anyone," Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Sunday during a weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem. In his remarks, Olmert was referring to the ongoing Qassam rocket attacks being launched from the Gaza Strip against southern Israeli towns, one day after an 8-year-old boy lost his leg in a Qassam attack on Sderot and his brother was also seriously hurt. However, the prime minister told his cabinet, "the pain is shared by all of us, and the rage is natural and understandable, but rage is not a course of action. We must act in a balanced, thought-out manner."
Vice Premier Haim Ramon said Israel, which had assassinated senior Palestinian leaders including Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in 2004, should "rain fire" on areas of Gaza from which Qassm rockets are fired.

Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit said Israel should order Palestinian civilians living in those areas to leave their homes and "demolish everything". Ramon, Sheetrit and Housing Minister Ze'ev Boim said anyone involved in the rocket attacks, either directly or indirectly, should be targeted for assassination. Sheetrit singled out Ismail Haniyeh, prime minister of Hamas' government in the Gaza Strip, as a "legitimate target". Defense Minister Ehud Barak, during a visit to Sderot, said the military will "strike with all our means" militants firing the rockets.

"You can hear the helicopter gunships in the air. We will continue to act until we bring an end to the Qassam [rocket] fire," Barak said. Transportation Minister and former defense minister Shaul Mofaz criticized the government's approach to the situation in the Gaza Strip, saying "the targets of operation in Gaza are not defined. We must determine what we want to achieve, and then act in accordance."

Mofaz urged personally harming the heads of both the military and political arms of Hamas. "There is no such thing as a political arm in Hamas," he said. "They are all involved in terrorist activity. I don't understand why we haven't hurt [senior Hamas official] Mahmoud Zahar, who is also involved in terror." Officials in the Prime Minister's Office and the defense establishment maintained that there is no intention to change the current government policy and launch a broad military campaign in the Gaza Strip. Opposition leaders, however, urged the launch of a large offensive in the Strip, following Saturday's Qassam attack.

MK Silvan Shalom (Likud) said that, "until today the government refrained from a military operation out of political considerations, but the longer they [the government] continue to delay it, the price grows heavier."

MK Zevulun Orlev (NRP) said that the state has refrained from a large-scale ground offensive as to not admit to the failure of the 2005 disengagement from the Gaza Strip, maintaining that "there is no other option but Operation Defensive Shield 2."

Shas Minister Yitzhak Cohen called for a complete power cut in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, saying that "as long as Sderot is burning we must suffocate the infrastructures in Gaza until all those who fire Qassams will put down their weapons in broad daylight."

Cohen said that cutting the electricity and fuel by one percent has the same international ramifications as cutting it by 100 percent, adding that "apparently in Gaza they do not understand warnings. Only a complete power cut will bring results."

haaretz.com/