Defense Minister Amir Peretz on Friday met with a group of Israel Defense Forces Reserves soldiers from the Sderot area who penned a letter protesting the continued Qassam rocket attacks.

The letter, published in the Friday edition of the Hebrew-language daily Yediot Aharonoth and addressed at Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, was written by dozens of IDF Reserves soldiers from the western Negev who expressed their dissatisfaction with the government's handling of the situation, and said that it diminishes their will to serve in Israel's armed forces.

"We refuse to allow our children and the residents of the [Sderot] area to continue to be Israel's cannon fodder," the letter read.

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During the meeting that took place at Peretz's home in Sderot, the reserves soldiers were shown IDF tactics aimed at steming the rocket fire.

An earlier draft of the letter to Olmert said the residents were refusing to serve, but the reservists said they backed off that position before sending the letter.

Sderot has been a regular target of Qassam rockets fired by Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip for several years, but the barrage of rocket fire has intensified in recent weeks, spurring a limited IDF operation in Gaza. At least two Qassam rockets struck the area Friday morning, causing no injuries.

"We demand that the Israeli government does what it needs to do, and that is to bring us and our families protection," said Haim Kuznitz, a lieutenant colonel in the reserves and one of the signatories to the protest letter.

"We want the Israeli government to sit down and decide to bring quiet to the Sderot region and the area around Gaza, decide what action to take - military, not military, diplomatic, political, it's not our concern," he said in an interview with Israel Radio on Friday.

"People feel that they can't go and serve in other places and completely abandon their families here," he said. "We have now been abandoned by the Israeli government. And today we - as husbands, as heads of the family, as parents, as fathers - still provide some protection just by being here. When we leave here, the families are completely abandoned."