Israel sees Hamas gone from Gaza in months

By Adam Entous and Rebecca Harrison

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli leaders vowed on Monday to step up their war against Hamas over rocket fire from the Gaza Strip and predicted the Islamist group's government in the territory would fall within months.

With Defence Minister Ehud Barak pledging to intensify a military campaign in Gaza, Vice Premier Haim Ramon said he expected Hamas, which seized control of the enclave last June, to be forced out.

"I believe a combination of steps against Hamas in Gaza will bring an end to the Hamas regime in Gaza," Ramon told reporters.

"They will not last. It will take a few months, maybe it will take a year. But the end of it will be that Hamas, as a terrorist organisation in Gaza, will not last."

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has faced pressure for tougher reprisals against militants in the Gaza Strip after an 8-year-old Israeli boy wounded in a weekend barrage of rocket fire had part of his leg amputated. He said Israel was at "war".

"Our security forces have the approval to take...what they see as all the necessary steps -- with our agreement -- so that the situation can be changed," Olmert told reporters during a visit to Berlin.

Militants in the Gaza Strip regularly pound southern Israeli towns with rockets and mortars, in what Hamas says is a response to Israeli attacks.

The Jewish state regularly launches raids against militants in Gaza, and its incursions have killed around 700 Palestinians over the past 12 months, Gazan officials say. Two Israelis were killed last year by cross-border rocket attacks from Gaza.