Despite harsh international criticism, Israeli leaders decided yesterday to continue their policy of targeting Palestinian militants.
Tens of thousands of West Bank residents flocked to the funerals of the eight Palestinians killed on Tuesday in an Israeli helicopter strike on the offices of the militant group, Hamas.
At the end of the five-hour meeting of the security cabinet - an inner cabinet including Israeli Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon and Foreign Minister Mr Shimon Peres - it was agreed that the policy of "pinpoint liquidations" would continue against both the perpetrators and the planners of attacks. Among the dead were two senior Hamas commanders and two children, brothers aged 8 and 10.
"If we didn't stop them, the attacks that they would carry out in Israel would harm children and women," said Mr Uri Shani, the director of the Prime Minister's Office. "Our job is to prevent such attacks."
Israel has said some of the Hamas members killed in the blast were responsible for a spate of bombings inside Israel in recent months.
Even Mr Peres, one of the architects of the Oslo accords and the leading "dove" in Mr Sharon's unity government, defended the strike, which, he said, was a "preventive operation" that had targeted those militants "who were really involved in planting bombs. The problem is Hamas," he said. "They don't respect any law. And they use suicide bombers, which is contrary to the beliefs of all three major religions."
Mr Peres added that he was "very, very saddened" by the deaths of the two children.
In the West Bank town of Nablus, many in the funeral procession carried the green Hamas flag, while some fired guns in the air and called for revenge attacks against Israel.
Before the burials, a senior Fatah member in the West Bank, Mr Hussein a-Sheikh, said the Palestinians no longer recognised the ceasefire brokered by the CIA director, Mr George Tenet, in mid-June. He said the Palestinian Authority would now strengthen its co-operation with Fatah and Hamas.
Following the bombing, some 20 mortar shells were fired at Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip.
A small pipe-bomb exploded yesterday near the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak criticised the Israeli attack, warning yesterday that it would "create a cycle of revenge and it will be the Palestinian and Israeli people who will pay the price in the end."
While there is strong public support in Israel for the "liquidation" policy, some observers pointed out yesterday the attack was likely to spark an unprecedented wave of Hamas reprisals. After Hamas bomb-maker Yihya Ayyash was killed in Gaza in 1996 by a booby-trapped mobile phone, there were four Hamas attacks in Israel in nine days.