Israeli ministers demanding all-out offensive in Gaza

With renewed hostilities along Israel's border with Gaza posing growing concerns, senior Israeli officials are weighing the possibility of a large-scale military offensive in the enclave. Israeli Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom said Tuesday that the Israeli government "is nearing a dramatic decision that would end the bombardment of the South." He would not spell out the measures the government was weighing, but accused Hamas of creating an "intolerable situation." "Terrorist leaders send others to become martyrs but do not become martyrs themselves. If the rocket attacks do not stop, we will take direct action against the terrorist leaders and their infrastructure, action which has already proved itself in the past, " the Ynet news website quoted Shalom as saying. Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Monday that he intended to officially request that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's security cabinet convene for an emergency session to discuss "the immediate need" for ordering a large-scale operation. "We should not wait for miracles... Hamas' regime (in Gaza) must be toppled," Lieberman, who heads the hard-line Yisrael Beiteinu party, told reporters at the Knesset (parliament). In the latest hostilities that broke out last week, one Israeli civilian and at least 10 Palestinian militants have been killed in rocket attacks from Gaza and retaliatory air strikes from Israel. Militants in Gaza fired a salvo of seven Grad rockets on Monday evening at the southern Israeli cities of Beersheba, Sderot and Ashkelon, further distancing the prospect of an Egyptian-brokered truce. In late 2008, repeated Palestinian rocket attacks against southern Israel prompted then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to order an invasion dubbed "Cast Lead" into Gaza, in which more than 1,000 Palestinians and a dozen Israeli soldiers were killed. While the Israeli air strikes in Gaza have thus far targeted Islamic Jihad, the group responsible for most of the latest rocket barrages, they stopped short of hitting Hamas' strategic assets, prompting the leaders of cities and communities in southern Israel to call on the government to step up military operations. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, however, has publicly said that he does not favor widening military action in order to curtail sporadic rocket attacks. The activation of mass military forces requires "cautious judgment," Barak said in an interview with Army Radio on Monday, asserting that he was not "among those who miss returning to Gaza. " "I do not rule out the possibility that the time will come in which we'll find ourselves in a broad, all-out confrontation, but I don't see any value in prematurely rushing into things," Barak said. He said the government was seeking to protect Israeli civilians, not "busy setting fires just to appear as initiators" and rejected reports of an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire. Speaking at the opening of the Knesset's winter session on Monday, Netanyahu told lawmakers that "a security philosophy cannot rely on defense alone. It must also include offensive capabilities, the very foundation of deterrence." Southern Israel remained largely quiet on Tuesday, with the military saying that it has not detected any rocket launches from Gaza. Municipal leaders at several major cities, however, kept schools closed for the third day in a row despite a directi