Netanyahu visits southern region following Gaza escalation

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today visited a southern Israeli town bordering Gaza that was pummelled with rockets over the weekend from the strip and told community leaders there that Israel is engaged in a "lengthy battle".

Netanyahu's visit to Sderot comes a day after an informal cease-fire took hold to end 24 hours of intense fighting with Gaza's Hamas militants that had threatened to devolve into all-out war.

Israel pounded Hamas targets in its most massive bombardment since the 2014 war, while militants fired dozens of rockets toward Israel that halted daily life in the area.

Two Palestinian teenagers were killed in an Israeli air strike in Gaza City, while four Israelis were wounded from a rocket that landed on a residential home in Sderot.

Netanyahu visited a local kindergarten and pledged that Israel would put an end to the rocket fire and a Gaza militant campaign of sending incendiary kites and balloons across the border that have ignited fires damaging Israeli farms and nature reserves.

Hamas will face a "wall of steel" if it keeps up its aggression against Israel, Netanyahu warned, adding, however, that the threat won't disappear overnight.

"It doesn't end in one strike," Netanyahu said. "We know we are engaged in a lengthy battle."
"There is no such thing as a cease-fire that does not include the flaming kites and balloons," he said. "If this is not understood through my words, it will be understood through the military's actions."