ISRAEL: Several of Israeli Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon's strongest right-wing critics yesterday threw their weight behind his plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, won over by the unexpectedly far-reaching guarantees he garnered last week from US President Bush and by Saturday's killing of Hamas leader Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi.
Unperturbed by Hamas vows to unleash "a volcano" of violence against Israel, Mr Sharon told his cabinet ministers that Israel would continue to target all members of Hamas and other groups that were deliberately killing Israeli civilians.
"This policy of making an effort on the one hand to advance a political process, and on the other hand to hit the terror organizations and their leaders, will continue," he said.
A ministerial colleague, Mr Gideon Ezra, named as another potential target Khaled Mashaal, the head of the "Hamas political bureau" who is based in Damascus, and who Israel has tried to kill before. "The fate of Khaled Mashaal is the fate of Rantissi," he said. "The minute we have the operational opportunity, we will do this."
The Israeli government sent out briefing papers highlighting what they said was Mr Rantissi's personal responsibility "for the Hamas terror policy", and recycling his quotations from the Hamas website which advocated violence as "the only option for the restoration of our stolen rights", refused to countenance any recognition of what is called the state of Israel, and insisted on Islamic rule over "every inch" of the West Bank, Gaza and sovereign Israeli territory.
The missile strike was backed by the opposition Labour Party leader Mr Shimon Peres, who said Israel had "no choice" but to "fight terror with all strength".
He added: "We must also tell the Palestinians that terror is also their enemy, not only ours." Some of Mr Sharon's right-wing critics had been claiming that his plan to pull out of the Gaza Strip by the end of next year would be perceived by Hamas as a victory for its suicide-bombing strategy.
The killing of Mr Rantisi, following so soon after the killing of the Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, seemed designed to counter any such impression.
And in the wake of the strike on Mr Rantisi, two of Mr Sharon's potentially most powerful rivals, the Finance Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, and Education Minister, Mr Limor Livnat, said they would now back the prime minister's disengagement vision, which is to be put to a referendum of all 200,000 members of the Likud party on May 2nd.
Champions of the 7,500 settlers of the Gaza Strip, whose 20 settlements are to be evacuated under the plan along with four small settlements in the West Bank, are campaigning among all Likud members in the hope of thwarting the plan.