Even as Defense Ministry officials said Sunday that Israel was likely to accept the Gaza Strip cease-fire deal brokered by Egypt, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, in a meeting with a high-level US congressional delegation, did not mention the cease-fire and talked instead about a possible large-scale military incursion.

Participants in Barak's meeting with the Congressmen said they walked away from the discussion with an impression that an IDF operation was very much in the offing.

In the meeting, which included US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Barak asked the members of the bipartisan congressional delegation to think how they would act if for seven years San Diego had been bombarded by rockets from Tijuana, just across the Mexican border.

When asked during an interview with The Jerusalem Post afterward whether Israel would be justified in launching a widespread incursion into Gaza, Pelosi said that "Israel makes its own decisions …