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BLITZER: Why not immediately cease the operation, given the humanitarian crisis that has developed inside Gaza?

NETANYAHU: This humanitarian crisis is the direct result of the Hamas tactic of firing at our civilians and hiding behind their civilians, and it's something that we cannot tolerate. No nation would tolerate 6,000 rockets fired on its cities, and Israel finally decided to take action.

 We have to make sure that we don't just have a cease-fire, but that this criminal rocketing of our cities is not resumed a few months from now. Because that's exactly what happened a few months ago. They were firing rockets at us, the Hamas. We had a cease-fire. They used the cease-fire to get further range -- longer-range rockets, which they have now fired at Beersheba and Ashdod and into the southern suburbs of Tel Aviv. So obviously, we have to remove the threat, not just stop the firing. And that's what Israel is engaged in right now.

 BLITZER: Certainly seems to be a lot of international pressure emerging on the government of Israel to accept a cease-fire. How does the Israeli government deal with this? And I know you speak as the opposition leader.

 NETANYAHU: Well, there is no opposition in coalition. There is no politics right now. We're united as a people to roll back this enormous terror threat to our people.

Remember that a million people -- that's roughly equivalent to 45 million Americans -- are under rocket fire in our major cities. So that's something we can't tolerate. No nation would tolerate it. You imagine that you're -- you now would hear an air raid siren from where you are. I think you're in Washington, is that right, Wolf?

If we just wanted to hit civilians, we would carpet-bomb Gaza. This is not something that we would even imagine doing.

We sent in our soldiers today and risked their lives -- in fact, lost Israeli lives today, the lives of our boys, because we're trying to ferret out the terrorists. If we just wanted to act from the air, we could have done what Britain did in World War II when thousands of rockets were fired on its cities, and you know, it leveled Dresden and a few other places in Germany.

I'm not criticizing Britain for that. The circumstances were such that it probably had to act in that fashion, but we are not acting in that fashion. We are doing what we can to pinpoint, surgically strike the terrorists. And sometimes, there are incidental civilian casualties.

But the burden of responsibility is on Hamas, and the way to stop this is to ensure that Hamas doesn't have the capability to resume fire within a very short time


(Source: CNN, Transcript from "Late Edition" with Wolf Blitzer, aired January 4, 2009 - 11:00 ET click here for full transcript)