MIDDLE EAST:Two senior Israeli cabinet ministers suggested yesterday that the political leadership of Hamas, and not just the Islamic group's military echelon, would be targeted.
The threats came as five Palestinian militants were killed in Israeli air attacks on Gaza and an Israeli woman was killed by a rocket fired from the strip into the southern town of Sderot.
Avi Dichter, the minister of internal security, warned that Khaled Mashaal, the Damascus-based Hamas leader whom Israel tried to assassinate in Amman 10 years ago, could be targeted. "Khaled Mashaal isn't immune, not in Damascus and not anywhere else," Mr Dichter told Israeli army radio. "I'm convinced that, at the first opportunity, he will be bade farewell."
Another minister, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, said that no distinction should be made "between those who carry out the [ rocket] attacks [ into Israel] and those who give the orders. I say we have to put them all in the crosshairs."
Israel continued targeting militants from the air yesterday.
Four Islamic Jihad militants were killed when the car in which they were travelling near the Jabalya refugee camp was torn apart by a missile. In the early hours of yesterday morning, a Hamas militant was killed in an air raid on the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiye.
Almost 40 Palestinians have been killed since Israel renewed its aerial assault on militants in Gaza in retaliation for the firing of dozens of rockets at towns in southern Israel.
The 35-year-old Israeli woman who was killed yesterday in Sderot - the first Israeli fatality in the latest upsurge in violence - died after a rocket struck a car close to where she was standing.
The attack came as foreign minister Tzipi Livni and Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief, were meeting in the town to discuss ways of ending the latest violence.
On Sunday night it seemed that Israel might be going after Hamas political leaders - as it did several years ago, assassinating the movement's most senior figures - when a missile hit the home of Hamas law-maker Khalil al-Haya.
While Mr al-Haya was not at home at the time of the missile strike, a total of eight people were killed, including seven members of his family, among them his 60-year-old father. Palestinian officials said that most of the dead were civilians, but the Israeli military claimed that five were Hamas militants and the other three civilians.
Israeli military officials insisted that the target had not been Mr al-Haya, but a group of militants gathered near his home.
Despite the threats from the two ministers, Israeli government officials yesterday said that the renewal of air strikes on Gaza was not aimed at the political echelon of Hamas.