The Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, ridiculed Palestinian leaders yesterday calling them "crybabies", while Israeli military officials said they had received orders to launch an intensive assault aimed at crushing the radical Islamic Hamas movement.
Speaking after Israel launched its fifth missile strike on Hamas militants in Gaza in just 48 hours - this time seven Palestinians, including a leading militant, his wife and two children were killed - an Israeli security source said the Defence Ministry had ordered the army "to use everything they have" to hit Hamas. "This targeted killing is just the beginning," the source said.
Other officials confirmed that orders had been given to smash Hamas's armed infrastructure in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with the focus on the leadership of its military wing. Twenty-three Palestinians have been killed in air strikes over the last 48 hours, about half of them civilians.
The militant Islamic group, which has carried out most of the suicide attacks in the 32 months of fighting, claimed responsibility on Wednesday for the suicide bombing on a bus in Jerusalem, in which 17 people were killed.
Mr Sharon told his cabinet yesterday that the policy of targeting leading Palestinian militants would continue and that he had never given the US an undertaking to suspend it.
Yesterday, helicopter gunships fired missiles at a car carrying Yasser Taha and Ibrahim Srur, two members of the Hamas military wing, in Gaza City. Taha's wife Fatima (25), his two-year-old daughter and his five-year-old son, who were in the car with him, were also killed. Two bystanders also died in the attack.
Hundreds of people thronged to the site. Some picked belongings from the vehicle's smouldering, mangled carcass. One man held aloft a baby's bottle and the shoe of a small child.
An Israel army spokeswoman, Maj Sharon Feingold, expressed regret at the civilian casualties. "As the result of a mistake, family members were also killed," she said. "They were not targets."
Hamas said yesterday it was ordering "all military cells to act immediately and act like an earthquake to blow up the Zionist entity and tear it to pieces". It referred to Mr Sharon as a wanted terrorist and said he was a legitimate target for assassination.
Mr Sharon, who pledged on Wednesday to pursue armed groups like Hamas "until their total destruction", yesterday told his cabinet that Israel could not afford to wait for the Palestinian Prime Minister and his new government to establish itself and begin to fight terror.
Palestinian leaders were "crybabies", he said, implying they were not making any effort to curb militant groups, yet when attacks took place their response was to whine. Mr Sharon also referred to Mr Mahmoud Abbas as "a chick who hasn't grown feathers", saying Israel would continue to strike at Palestinian militants until he did.
Palestinian Minister Mr Yasser Abed Rabbo said Mr Sharon's aim was "to discredit the Palestinian government and to assassinate his real enemy, which is the road map".