JERUSALEM (AP) — Feb. 4  The front-runner for Israel's election next week said Israel's offensive against Hamas militants in Gaza last month did not go far enough.

Benjamin Netanyahu told a security conference Wednesday the government stopped the operation before the military could halt Hamas arms smuggling through tunnels under Gaza's border with Egypt.

Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu waits to speak at the Herzliya Conference in Herzliya near Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2009. The front-runner for Israel's election next week, Netanyahu, said Wednesday that Israel's offensive against Hamas militants in Gaza last month did not go far enough.(AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

He also called for removing Hamas from power, calling it an "extremist fanatic regime backed by the extremist fanatic government of Iran."

He stopped short of saying he would attack Gaza again to uproot the regime if he is elected.

Israel's three-week offensive on Gaza killed 1,300 people, about half of them civilians, according to Palestinian figures. Israel said it wanted to stop the years of rocket fire from Gaza into the southern part of the country.

Rockets fired from Gaza went deeper than ever into Israel during the offensive, leading to concerns that more foreign-made rockets were being smuggled into Gaza through tunnels under the border with Egypt.

Hamas forces overran the crowded, impoverished Gaza Strip in June 2007.

Polls show that Netanyahu's hawkish Likud Party and its hawkish allies would receive a majority in the new parliament after the Feb. 10 election, giving him the best chance to be named prime minister.

Netanyahu warned that any territory Israel relinquishes will be "grabbed by extremists," referring to the possibility of trading West Bank land for peace in a deal with the Palestinians.

Such an exchange is the cornerstone of current peace efforts backed by the U.S. and the international community. A year of U.S.-backed negotiations between Israel and the Western-backed government of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, which rules the West Bank, has produced no apparent progress.

Netanyahu said negotiations with the Palestinians should concentrate on economic issues and policing.

"That is not a replacement for political negotiations" toward a peace treaty, he said. "It is the only path toward them."

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who helped direct the Israeli assault on Gaza, is slightly behind Netanyahu in the polls. She advocates negotiating a peace treaty with Abbas but has called for stern measures against Hamas if rocket fire continues from Gaza.

The other architect of the Gaza offensive, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, is far behind, with some polls showing his center-left Labor Party in fourth place.

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