Sharon's
security cabinet decided late Sunday to increase military pressure on the
Palestinians after 21 Israelis were killed by a martyr operation in Jerusalem
and operations by gunmen in the Palestinian territories over the weekend.
"I
approve any operation aimed at punishing the Palestinians until they beg for a
ceasefire," Sheetrit, a Likud moderate, told Israeli public radio.
"Our action will be much more intense. We are at war and the Palestinians
must know this. When they want to talk, then we'll see about it," he said,
Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
This
comes at a time that Israel has dismissed a peace plan, proposed by Saudi Crown
Prince Abdullah. In the plan, he envisages full political, economic and cultural
ties between the Arabs and Israel in return for the Jewish state's withdrawal
from all Arab lands it occupied in the 1967 Mideast war.
Saar
told reporters after the Cabinet meeting that the Saudi provision on the
withdrawal to the prewar lines was unacceptable as a starting point for
negotiations, the Indian daily newspaper, Times of India,
reported. "We will not be able to accept, in principle, something dictated
before negotiations," he said. "The frontier, in the whole area, will
be determined only by negotiation."
Jerusalem
mayor Ehud Olmert, a member of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's hardline
right-wing Likud party, and Labor Sports Minister Matan Vilnai, meanwhile,
warned Israelis to prepare for a long war.
Vilnai
for his part said "Israel is expecting a coordinated escalation of
terrorism."
He said it would fight Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as "the one who
took the decision to order this escalation," adding, "It will be long,
painful and difficult, and we will continue at the same time to hold out a hand
to those, who want to throw a bridge over this ocean of blood."
Olmert
also called, without naming him, for a strike against Marwan Barghuti, the West
Bank head of Arafat's Fatah movement, who praised Sunday the "heroic
operations" of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a radical offshoot of Fatah.
An
aide to Sharon said the military operations would focus on local militias,
especially the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which has claimed most of the attacks on
Israeli targets in recent weeks.
Meanwhile,
the leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades for the northern West Bank region of
Jenin was killed Monday by Israeli troops, Fatah sources said. Amjad Fakhuri,
30, the local leader of the offshoot of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah
group, was killed in an exchange of fire with the troops, who had earlier
entered the autonomous flashpoint town, the sources said.
