Cabinet Minister Gideon Ezra said Sunday that Israel should declare a unilateral 10-day cease-fire in IDF operations in the Gaza Strip, with the exception of cases in which it was possible to directly prevent an imminent Qassam rocket launch.

Were the Palestinians to violate the cease-fire, Israel would take much harsher military steps in Gaza than it has been implementing of late, said Ezra, a senior member of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's Kadima party.

Ezra also said that the artillery attack last week in which IDF gunners mistakenly hit a residential area in Beit Hanun, killing 20 civilians, was a "massacre," as were Palestinian rocket attacks on Sderot.

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Ezra spoke after new salvos of Qassam rockets hit the western Negev. Shrapnel from one of the six rockets fired on Sunday moderately wounded a Sderot-area man, Israel Radio reported.

"In my view, our responses in the Gaza Strip are not those which will bring about calming," Ezra told the radio. "I am in favor of doing something which we have never before done."

According to Ezra, "In the absence of a central government in the Gaza Strip, we should appeal to the silent majority in Gaza, which suffers no less than others, and provide an opportunity such that, for a period of 10 days, we do not respond to each and every Qassam, in particular because of the lack of targets."

"This is a entirely unilateral cease-fire" in which the IDF "would not shoot at this or that activist unless he was directly connected to the firing of a Qassam within the next five minutes," Ezra told Israel Radio.

The cease-fire would be declared publicly, Ezra continued. "The population of Gaza would see this, the international public would see this.

However, Ezra added, "if during those 10 days, the Palestinians violate the truce, in my view, the state of Israel would be justified in taking much, much tougher measures than we have been taking thus far."

Such a step could act to strengthen the hand of moderates against the ruling Hamas, Ezra said.

"We are in a stage in which we must decide, whether we agree with the existing [situation], or if we want Abu Mazen to be strengthened," he said in a reference to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

As a top priority, the IDF must be strengthened as well, Ezra said.

Ezra said he had informed the prime minister of the proposal. "What I'm saying is based on conversations with Palestinians, not Hamas people. This was their proposal, first and foremost, when there was the massacre at Beit Hanun."

Asked if he intended to use the term "massacre," Ezra told Israel Radio "Twenty people were killed there," adding that what is happening in Sderot is also something absolutely illegitimate, and that is a massacre as well."

Ezra said that Israel must "first of all, strengthen the army. Second, strengthen the side of Abu Mazen and the Egyptians, do everything to free [captive IDF soldier] Gilad Shalit, and to seriously devote ourselves to the issue of the [arms-smuggling] tunnels on the Philadelphi Route."

"We must reach a situation where the population of the Gaza strip, in the absence of a central government, opposes the launching of Qassams. Our population could use some fresh air as well. I'm not certain that this will not work ? nor am I sure that it will. But we've never tried this path, and I'm going to propose this to the government."