Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told school principals and heads of local councils in the rocket-besieged Negev Sunday, "I understand your distress. I know what it means for a child, even if a Kassam does not fall on the roof of his home, to hear the missile strikes and go to sleep every night in fear. It is important to me that you know that we are truly with you."

The Prime Minister added that the area's problems caused by the rocket attacks, which have continued almost continuously for more than six years, "cannot be solved in one go and that we are currently trying to make it so unpleasant for them that they [terrorists] will reduce the firing."