Barak: IDF will increase pressure in Gaza if rockets don't stop By Shahar Ilan, Haaretz Correspondent, and News Agencies
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/960605.html Defense Minister Ehud Barak vowed on Tuesday that if the Qassam rocket fire from the Gaza Strip into Israel does not stop, the Israel Defense Forces will continue operating in the Strip and will even increase its pressure.
Barak spoke one day after a six-day IDF action in the Gaza Strip left more than 100 Palestinians and two IDF soldiers dead.
"I hear that in the world, even friends, are raising questions like 'is Israel using excessive force?' To these critics, even the friends among them,
I say that the responsibility lies with those who fire rockets," Barak said in a speech.
The defense minister promised to bring calm to the communities in southern Israel near the border with Gaza, who bear the brunt of the rocket attacks.
"To the residents of Gaza we can only say that when the rockets stop, and the terrorist attacks coming out of Gaza into Israel stop, only then will a way open up to a different reality of calm on both sides and good neighborly relations. However, the continuation of rocket fire will lead to the continuation of our actions, even with higher intensity," he said.
Barak added that Israel is being tested currently in the Gaza Strip, and that its military actions there would continue. According to him, the situation does not call for a "wham bam thank you ma'am" kind of operation, but rather a long process. But Israel is determined, he stressed.
Also Tuesday, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told foreign diplomats based in Israel that Israel would reoccupy the Hamas-ruled Gaza if necessary, though it prefers not to do so, the Foreign Ministry said.
"We cannot afford this kind of extreme Islamic state controlled by Hamas," Livni said, according to a ministry statement released Tuesday.
"Israel evacuated Gaza not in order to come back, but we might find ourselves in a situation where we have no choice," Livni said.
Israel pulled its settlers and troops out of the territory, home to 1.4 million Palestinians, in 2005. Hamas violently seized control there last June.
Livni added that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' decision to halt peace negotiations in the wake of the recent IDF operation in Gaza shows weakness, signaling to Hamas that its attacks from Gaza could influence Abbas' actions.
On Monday, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared that the operation in the Gaza Strip is not a singular event. "The operation is not a one-time event: neither in us going in, nor us pulling out."
Speaking before the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Monday, Olmert said that "everything is on the table - ground operations, air [strikes] and special operations."
He described the government's goals in the operation that ended early Monday morning, and in others to come as "significantly decreasing the launch of indirect fire, and the weakening of Hamas rule in the Gaza Strip, in a way that will check its ability to control life in the Gaza Strip."
Olmert also stressed that negotiations with the Palestinians will continue. He said that without negotiations, Israel would be condemned by the international community, even if it behaved in a restrained and balanced manner.
"That which enables us to manifest our basic right to self defense is the political horizon. There is no way to prevent the 'Gazafication' process and the rise of Hamas in the West Bank without offering a political horizon. Whoever cannot recognize this is simply lying to himself," the Prime Minister said.
Olmert also argued that a military operation in the Strip had become necessary even without Ashkelon being targeted by Hamas.
"From the ethical point of view, shots fired against Netivot are no different from those fired on Ashkelon. The lives of those living in the communities bordering the Gaza Strip are just as important and precious as those of any Israeli."
The prime minister said he rejects the "lectures on morals" coming from outside Israel.
