Israel vowed to strike back at Hamas yesterday after renewed rocket fire from the Islamists' Gaza stronghold two weeks after the end of a bloody war in the battered Palestinian territory.

"We've said that if there is rocket fire against the south of the country, there will be a severe and disproportionate Israeli response,” Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said at the weekly cabinet meeting.

Israel -- which goes to the polls on February 10 -- has been hit by several rockets since a January 18 ceasefire brought an end to the 22-day war on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

"We will act according to new rules that will guarantee that we are not dragged into an incessant tit-for-tat war that will not allow normal life in the south of the country," Olmert said.

"The situation... in recent days has increased in a manner that docs not allow Israel not to retaliate in order to make sure that our position... is understood by those involved in the fire.

"The response will come at the time, the place and tHc man -ner that we choose."

Defence Minister Ehud Barak said that "Hamas was given a very serious blow and if necessary it will be given another blow."

And Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, infrastructure minister and a member of Israel's powerful security cabinet, said the Islamists had to pay for each rocket fired.

"We have set a price for each rocket fired and now Hamas has to pay," he told army radio.

The officials spoke after four rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel within a space of a few hours on Sunday.

But Hamas slammed the tiireats as a "campaign stunt" before the February 10 election.

"This is an attempt... to destroy the Egyptian efforts to improve the calm," Taher Al-Nunu said in a statement in Gaza.

Next week's election is expected to bring the Israeli right-wing back into power, accordingto opinion polls.

The political supremo of Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, on Sunday ruled out any "perma-nent ceasefire" until Israel ends its crippling blockade of the Gaza

Strip.

*The resistance is against a permanent ceasefire," he said at a news conference in Tehran, Iran’s state news agency IRNA reported.

"While the occupation continues, a permanent ceasefire has no meaning," Meshaal said at the conference, jointly held with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki.

Israel has enforced a blockade of the enclave ever since the Islamist movement violently seized control in a week of deadly street fighting with its Fatah rivals in mid-2007.

Meshaal, who arrived in Iran earlier on Sunday for his first visit since the war, said the Gaza blockade was a key "priority".

"Until the blockade continues, we believe the aggression (by Israel) continues," he added.

Olmert, forced to step down in September amid corruption probes, is not standing and his centrist Kadima party- - now led by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni -- is trailing behind the rightwing Likud of former premier Benjamin! Netanyahu.