( dpa ) - Calls were growing in Israel Sunday for the government to approve a wide-ranging ground offensive in the Gaza Strip to thwart incessant rocket attacks against the southern areas of the Jewish state, but Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned that emotions should not dictate policy.
Addressing his ministers at Sunday's weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, after around 40 rockets were launched from the Gaza Strip at Israel over Friday and Saturday, the prime minister said that "it must be clear that outrage is not a plan for action." Olmert, who met with defence chiefs before the cabinet meeting to discuss the rocket fire, said Israel instead had to act "in a systematic and orderly fashion over time. This is what we are doing. This is what we will continue to do.
"We will continue to reach all the responsible terrorists including those who dispatch and control them," a government statement quoted him as saying.
Interior Minister Mier Shitreet suggested that the Israeli military should choose a Gaza neighbourhood, warn its residents to leave, and then wipe it out.
"That way those in Gaza will understand we are serious," he said.
Transport Minister Shaul Mofaz, a former defence minister and military chief of staff, accused the government of "lacking focus" in its response to the rockets.
"We need to decide now what our goals are, and then decide on our course of action," he said.
Later, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said a Palestinian state could not be formed as long as Hamas continued to control the Gaza Strip.
" Gaza is today a problem for anyone who seeks peace, and therefore can never be part of a future Palestinian state," she said.
Meanwhile, a Palestinian militant from the Popular Front was killed in the afternoon in a gunfight with Israeli soldiers. The Israeli military said he had opened fire on the troops who shot back.
One of the rockets which struck Israel on Saturday night seriously wounded two brothers, aged 19 and 8, when it hit two metres from where they were walking in the town of Sderot, which lies about two kilometres east of the Gaza Strip and which has borne the brunt of the rocket barrages launched from the strip.
Doctors were forced to amputate one of the legs of the 8-year-old on Sunday morning, and angry Sderot residents jeered Defence Minister Ehud Barak when he made an early morning visit to the town.
The minister's statement that "we will continue to attack (rocket-launching militants) with all available means," was virtually drowned out by shouting and demands that he resign.
Sderot residents then travelled by convoy to Jerusalem, where they staged an angry demonstration outside the prime minister's bureau. Some of them scuffled with police and tried to break through the metal security barrier outside the building.
The demonstrators had previously staged a sit-in at the entrance to Jerusalem, blocking traffic.
In retaliation for the attacks, Israel launched four overnight airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, killing a senior Hamas militant and wounding 10 people.
The aircraft also struck a post belonging to Hamas' armed wing in the town of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip and hit a building said to be a storehouse for Hamas arms and rockets.
A Hamas spokesman said in response to the Israeli strikes that the attacks would not bring security to the "Zionists."
"Inasmuch as the Israeli massacres, assassinations and invasions continue, the army of occupation should prepare itself to receive strikes by the Palestinian resistance," Ismail Radwan said.