Livni, Netanyahu vow to topple Hamas

Source: Agencies  |   2008-12-22  |     NEWSPAPER EDITION

THE two leading candidates to become Israel's next prime minister vowed yesterday to end Hamas rule in the Gaza Strip if elected, ratcheting up tensions after a six-month-old ceasefire ended in violence.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, head of the centrist Kadima party, said her government's "strategic objective" would be to "topple the Hamas regime" using military, economic and diplomatic means.

Benjamin Netanyahu, head of Israel's right-wing Likud party and Livni's main rival for the premiership, called for a more "active policy of attack," accusing the current government of being too "passive."

"In the long-term, the toppling of the Hamas regime is inevitable," he said while visiting a house in the southern Israeli town of Sderot that was hit by a rocket from Gaza.

Palestinian militants have fired nearly 60 of the makeshift rockets and mortar shells at Israel since the Egyptian-brokered ceasefire with Hamas ended last Friday, the Israeli army said. Over the weekend, one Palestinian militant was killed in an Israeli air strike and at least one person in southern Israel was injured by shrapnel from a shell.

Ismail Haniyeh, head of Hamas's government in Gaza, brushed aside the threat, saying: "Nothing can finish off our people."

The comments by Livni and Netanyahu followed a cabinet meeting in which outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert cautioned fellow ministers and opposition parties against making "bold statements" about an operation in the Gaza Strip.

Olmert suggested he favored a wait-and-see approach. "A government doesn't rush to battle, but doesn't avoid it either," he told his Cabinet. "Israel will know how to give the proper response at the right time in the right way, responsibly."