Minister for Strategic Threats Avigdor Lieberman is finally making his weight felt around the cabinet table. The majority, including our new defense minister, it seems, is prepared to support his proposal of starving the population of Gaza into submission. This is not a case of the correct decision being taken after all other alternatives have been exhausted. It is rather a case of stubbornly rejecting the only effective means of keeping Sderot's children out of range of Qassam rockets, and reaching for the most nonsensical, inhumane and ineffective of all alternatives - collective punishment.

The prime minister has already publicly issued the orders to the IDF: go after every launcher and kill every terrorist involved in launching Qassam rockets. And the Qassams keep coming. Rockets against the children of Sderot is not acceptable to us, we will not remain indifferent to this outrage, he says - so what else is new? His rhetoric does not seem to make much of an impression on those in Gaza who launch Qassams to greet Sderot's children on the opening of the new school year.

There are no magic solutions and no one-shot solutions, he repeats interminably. In other words, the people in Sderot better get used to it.