The limited range of the attacks drew sharp criticism from more than one government minister, as well as other public figures. Public Security Minister Uzi Landau, speaking this morning on Army Radio, called on Sharon to begin a “comprehensive ground assault” on the Palestinian Authority and its terrorist infrastructures. “Arafat is the enemy [and] the Oslo agreements have completely collapsed,” he said. “Israel should therefore not aim to reach a ceasefire but a decisive military victory.”

Interior Minister Avigdor Lieberman (National Union-Yisrael Beiteinu), who of late has muted his opposition to the government’s military responses, made his views known once again today when he strongly attacked Prime Minister Sharon’s “policy of restraint.” He said that the security cabinet “keeps moving back its red lines, and is basically offering no response to the Kassam-2 attacks… As of today, Sharon has still not provided a real solution against terrorist attacks… There is no direction… We are holding back while the other side is running wild.”

Lieberman accused Sharon of following the Oslo structure on the heels of Foreign Minster Shimon Peres:

“It’s like a permanent ritual: after every attack, we bomb empty buildings… Why do we have to wait for them to attack us before we attack Arafat’s Fatah or Force-17 headquarters? They are terrorist organizations in every sense!” He dismissed the claim that strong Israeli attacks play into the hands of the PA which is waiting for Israel to mistakenly hit a civilian building and cause many casualties: “We have to simply attack the right targets without waiting for us to suffer casualties first. None of the leaders should feel immune…”

Former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, a constant threat to Sharon’s leadership of the Likud Party, told a television interviewer last night that the current method of “bombing empty buildings” is ineffective: “The PA leadership has no concern for a building here or there,” he said, “and doesn’t even mind if a Hamas terrorist is killed. The only thing that concerns them is whatever has to do with their control over the population. If you hit the power bases of the PA, that will scare them.”

Housing Minister Natan Sharansky said yesterday that the recent attacks mean that Israel must intensify its responses: “We can’t enter the PA cities for 48 hours and then leave; we have to stay there for two weeks, to clean them out of weapons and arrest terrorists… This might break the PA militarily; at the same time, we must support the Palestinian population economically.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 12th, 2002 and is filed under hotnews.