Less than four months after Israel's withdrawal from the area, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said the army has been instructed to take all necessary measures to stop Palestinian terrorists from firing rockets from the Gaza Strip.

Israel's unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip after 30 years raised hopes in the international community that the Israeli-Palestinian peace process could resume.

Sharon said the disengagement would improve Israeli security, but those hopes have faded as the security situation has deteriorated.

Sharon told cabinet members on Sunday that he had "issued an unequivocal directive to the heads of the defense establishment that there are no restrictions on the means used to strike at the terrorists, members of the terror organizations, their equipment and their hideouts."

The options include establishing a buffer zone in the northern Gaza Strip, where Israel uprooted and demolished three Israeli communities this summer.

"This area has been a launch site of Kassam rockets into Ashkelon and [other] towns," said Sharon spokesman Dr. Ra'anan Gissin.

"We handed over to the Palestinian Authority the security to prevent terrorist acts from there," he said.

Initially, thousands of PA security forces were deployed in the Gaza Strip to prevent the firing of rockets and mortars at Israeli targets, but over the last three months, more than 200 rockets have been launched at Israeli communities.

On Monday, two Kassam rockets landed inside Israel - one of them near a pre-school where a Chanukah party was taking place. No injuries were reported.

The army responded overnight by targeting two buildings in the Gaza Strip, which it said were used for terrorist activities. The army also targeted access routes used by terrorists to reach Kassam launching sites.

Last week, two rockets fell on the outskirts of the Israeli city of Ashkelon, without causing any damage but raising fears that the rockets were coming closer to heavily populated areas and Israeli infrastructure.

This is no longer terrorism, it's an "act of war," said Gissin.

According to Gissin, the buffer zone would be three to four kilometers (about two miles) wide and 10-15 kilometers (6-9 miles) long - stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to the Israeli border - and would include the now-demolished Jewish settlements of Elei Sinai, Nissanit and Dugit.

The Palestinian population would be warned that the area is a "no-go" zone and anyone who enters it would be targeted, he said. Surveillance would be by air, land and sea, he added.

Israeli ground forces would not be deployed "at this stage," said Gissin. But Reserve Col. Shuki Rynski, former deputy commander of the Gaza Strip division, said it is only a matter of time before Israeli ground troops would have to re-enter and take conrol of the entire Gaza Strip if Israel wants to stop the firing of rockets at its population.

A small buffer zone of several hundred meters would not stop the firing of Kassams. A larger zone of four kilometers wide would put the zone right in the middle of highly populated Palestinian areas, said Rynski in a telephone interview.

In the next few months, he predicted that Palestinians would come up with "superior Kassams" with a longer range that would be able to hit the center of Ashkelon. Then no buffer zone would help, he said.

The heart of Ashkelon is no more than 10 miles from the northern Gaza Strip.

Several militant groups vowed to continue their attacks on Israel despite the "no-go" zone. One group claimed to have developed a homemade rocket with a range of 15 kilometers and another group said it had obtained Grad missiles with a range of 25 kilometers.

According to Rynski, Israel must do two things to gain the upper hand on security in Gaza. First Israel must regain control of the Gaza-Egypt border, he said.

Israel agreed to give the PA full control over the border last month in a U.S.-brokered deal, in exchange for real-time video monitoring of the border by Israeli and European monitors.

At least initially, the video was too hazy to determine who was entering the Gaza Strip, and Israel complained that about a dozen wanted terrorists had managed to enter Gaza.

Rynski said that with the border under PA control, those who have the expertise to make longer-range, more powerful rockets could freely enter Gaza.

Gissin also said that Palestinian groups were managing to smuggle "tons of standard explosives" into the Gaza Strip.

The second thing Israel must do if it wants to stop the firing of rockets is to re-enter Gaza and to take control of the whole Gaza Strip, Rynski said. Kassam rockets are primitive and therefore cannot be stopped by technology, he said.

The PA has rejected the idea of a buffer zone. Presidential spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said such a zone would negatively affect efforts to keep an already shaky truce between the PA and militant groups.

Abu Rudeineh called on the U.S. to pressure Israel to rescind its decision to set up the zone.

Julie Stahl is CNSNews.com Jerusalem Bureau Chief.

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