Warning of the potential downfall of Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah government in the West Bank, Defense Minister Ehud Barak rejected reports on Wednesday that Israel had agreed to a cease-fire with Hamas, while claiming that additional IDF operations in Gaza were impendent. "There is a continuous battle taking place in Gaza," Barak said during a meeting of the Labor Party executive committee in Tel Aviv. "This is not a reality show, and there is no reason to fight with a stopwatch. Things will get tougher before they get quiet."
Defense officials said Wednesday night that as long as Hamas continued to use the lull in violence to rearm and rehabilitate its military wing, which was badly damaged during the IDF's operation in northern Gaza last week, additional operations would be inevitable. The officials said that the IDF was continuing to prepare for a large-scale invasion of the Gaza Strip.
Barak dismissed reports that had surfaced in recent days that the head of his Diplomatic-Security Bureau Amos Gilad had negotiated a cease-fire with Hamas during his visit to Cairo earlier this week. |