Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Monday said it would be impossible to reach an agreement with Hamas.
Addressing the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Monday, Lieberman declared that "it hasn't worked in the past, and it won't work in the future."
He said, "We have reached a point where we have no other choice. Nothing short of the strongest and heaviest blow we can deliver to Hamas in the Gaza Strip will help."
Lieberman went on to say that Israel must not agree to any truce with Hamas unless the terrorist organization agrees to end the violence on the border, agrees to a prisoner exchange, removes a clause in the terrorist group's official charter that calls for Israel's destruction, halts its rocket production, stops digging terror tunnels and stops incitement in Judea and Samaria.
Hamas is holding the remains of two Israeli soldiers, Staff Sgt. Oron Shaul and Lt. Hadar Goldin, who were killed in the Gaza Strip in 2014, as well as two living Israeli captives, Ethiopian Israeli Avera Mengistu and Bedouin Israeli Hisham al-Sayed, both mentally unstable, who wandered voluntarily into Gaza (in 2014 and 2015 respectively) and were captured by the terrorist group.
According to Lieberman, the Palestinian border riots, which have grown increasingly violent since they began in late March, are "not a popular protest but rather a display of institutionalized violence by Hamas."
Meanwhile, firefighters battled five separate fires sparked in Israeli territory by incendiary balloons launched from Gaza. Police sappers and paramedics arrived at one of the communities in the Ashkelon Regional Council after a civilian discovered what appeared to be an incendiary balloon.
Rioters on Gaza's border with Israel near Kibbutz Zikim burned tires and threw grenades, Molotov cocktails and other explosives at IDF forces.
The Health Ministry in Gaza said 20 protesters were wounded by Israeli fire.
The protests took place as Egyptian mediators were in Gaza for cease-fire talks.
Also on Monday, an Egyptian delegation headed by Egyptian intelligence official Ahmed Abdel Khalek arrived in Gaza to meet with senior Hamas officials, Arab media reported.
Khalek's arrival appears to be laying the groundwork for the arrival of Egyptian General Intelligence Service head Maj. Gen. Abbas Kamel later in the week.
