Netanyahu in Sderot
Photo: Amir Cohen
Storeroom hit by Qassam, Thursday
Photo: Ze'ev Trachtman
Netanyahu: When I was PM Palestinians were afraid
Opposition leader visits rocket-battered town of Sderot, says 'government must launch a war on the enemy'
Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu
promised Sderot's residents on Thursday that a government headed by him would bring an end to the firing of Qassam rockets from the Gaza Strip.
The opposition leader visited a school in the southern town and spoke to the students. As he entered the school, the commander of the local police station briefed him on the Qassam rockets fired from the northern Gaza Strip on Thursday morning, one of which landed in a storeroom in a house's backyard.
"During our term not one Qassam landed here, Hizbullah had thousands of missiles and did not fire even one, and when they did fire we hit them so hard that they stopped firing for six years. They should be afraid of us," Netanyahu said during a visit to the rocket-battered city of Sderot along with a number of Likud Knesset members.
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Several residents approached Netanyahu and shared their feelings with him.
One of the students told the Likud chairman that he and his friends will be enlisted to the IDF soon and don't want to join combat units "because I am being abandoned and I won't take part in it."
Netanyahu replied, "I want you to become a combat soldier because our policy must be to fight the enemy and defeat it, and the government must take this policy. We won't get anywhere if we don’t push them back. We mustn't lose hope and must fight."
The same student asked the opposition leader about his plans should he be elected prime minister again.
"I will change the policy," Netanyahu answered. "During our term no missiles were fired, because I will not tolerate a situation in which people in my country live like this. Not my family and not anyone. Our enemies must be afraid."
The student insisted that Olmert had also made promises which he failed to keep, causing Netanyahu to reiterate his remarks on his success when he headed the Likud government.
Netanyahu later met with another group of students and asked them to share their feelings with him. One of them told him that he was home alone when a rocket hit the house, and only a miracle saved him.
"This us our routine. We experience these things on a daily basis and feel that the government has been abandoning us for eight years now," the student said.
Netanyahu added, "Those who want to see a continuation of what happened in Lebanon should come to Sderot. There is a weak government, a government which cannot act against the rocket fire and activate the strongest army in the Middle East against a group of terrorists."
Earlier, the opposition leader and his faction members visited the Dimona commercial center, where a suicide bombing took place on Monday.
"Not fences or walls, but a strong and reinforced army and a government which can withstand international pressure will be able to provide security," he told the city's residents.
Yonat Atlas contributed to this report
