Olmert vows to target those behind rocket salvoes

By Adam Entous and Avida Landau

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Prime Minister Ehud Olmert threatened on Sunday to target all those behind cross-border rocket attacks from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip but warned against a knee-jerk Israeli military response.

Olmert has been wary of launching a large-scale ground operation in the densely populated coastal territory that could result in heavy Israeli as well as Palestinian casualties.

But he is under mounting domestic pressure to do more to counter the rocket fire, which seriously wounded two Israelis, including an eight-year-old boy, in the southern Israeli town of Sderot on Saturday. Part of the boy's leg was amputated.

"We need to act in an orderly and methodical fashion over time. This is what we are doing. This is what we will continue to do," Olmert told his cabinet.

"There is no way to stop the terror completely, in one fell swoop," Olmert later told reporters.

The prime minister vowed to target "all terror elements" in the Gaza Strip -- both those directly responsible for the rocket attacks as well as those who help organize them.

"We will not give special consideration to anyone," Olmert said, the strongest hint yet that Israel could start assassinating political leaders of the Hamas movement, which seized control of the Gaza Strip in June after routing Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's secular Fatah forces.

Key members of Olmert's cabinet explicitly called for targeting Hamas political leaders.

After Saturday's rocket fire, an Israeli air strike killed a Hamas militant in southern Gaza and Israeli troops shot dead a second Palestinian gunman during a raid into Gaza.

Two months after Olmert and Abbas launched the most serious statehood talks in seven years, the chief Israeli negotiator, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, said there would be no hope for peace or a Palestinian state that includes the Gaza Strip as long as militants kept up the rocket fire.

The chief Palestinian negotiator, former prime minister Ahmed Qurie, said that any Israeli military escalation would "affect the negotiation process", which, he acknowledged, has yet to pick up momentum or delve deeply into core issues.

Hamas, shunned by the West for refusing to renounce violence and recognize Israel's right to exist, claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing last week that killed one Israeli. The group opposes Abbas's peace talks.

ROCKET ATTACKS

Gaza militants frequently fire short-range rockets and mortars at towns in southern Israel in what they say is a response to Israeli attacks on the territory. Few of the rockets have caused deaths, but they have sown widespread panic.

Livni appeared to be preparing the ground internationally for a stepped up Israeli military campaign to stop the rockets.