Some responses to PM Sharon's speech:

The head of the ultra-secularist Shinui party, MK Yosef Lapid, said that “it appears that Sharon’s speech was cut off in the middle and that after the technical difficulties are resolved, he will continue and explain to the nation what are his plans, what are the objectives of entering into the Palestinian towns and where all this is supposed to lead.”

Chairman of the Knesset, Labor MK Avraham Burg, echoed Lapid saying, “The Prime Minister’s speech proves that we do not know where we are going… When there is no choice, one must act with a heavy hand, but it must not be a war for the sake of war. Rather, a war that would give hope for a normal future life in Israel. The government must understand this and act accordingly.”

MK Michael Kleiner, of the one-man Herut faction, stated that the Prime Minister seems ridiculous when he calls Yasser Arafat an enemy of the nation and of the entire free world, while at the same time seeing to it that he received pita bread over the Passover holiday. “It’s a good thing he didn’t give him matzot,” Kleiner said, “If Arafat is the enemy of the nation and of the free world, then it is unconscionable that he enjoys immunity from attack, that he receives foodstuffs, water, electricity, that he is able to be interviewed on CNN and that he receives courtesy calls from leftist groups.”