Posted on 06/12/2003 4:26:04 PM PDT by blam
Hamas vows to 'tear Israel to pieces' after Gaza attack
By Sa'id Ghazali in Jerusalem and Rupert Cornwell in Washington
13 June 2003
Hamas vowed yesterday to "blow up the Zionist entity and tear it to pieces" as Israeli helicopters patrolled the skies over Gaza to hunt down Palestinian militants in one of the most crowded cities in the world.
Speaking after an Israeli rocket attack that killed seven people, including a senior Hamas militant, Mahmoud al-Zahar, the Hamas leader, said the movement would "launch a series of new attacks against the Israeli people by the youths of Palestine. This crime will not pass without punishment.''
Activists from Yasser Arafat's mainstream movement said they were siding with the Islamic militants of Hamas. Hussein al Sheikh, a Fatah leader in Ramallah, said: "This is a bloody war against the Palestinian people. [The] Fatah movement stands with the Palestinian people in the resistance against the occupation.''
The dramatic hardening of their position came after Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, promised at an emergency cabinet meeting to press ahead with attacks against Hamas. His language seemed to doom the US-sponsored road-map for peace in the Middle East, which calls for an end to violence as a first step.
Israeli forces thrust into Gaza yesterday after their botched attempt to kill Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, Hamas's political leader, on Tuesday, which terrified the people of Gaza City as they went about their business. "We live in panic,'' Halima al-Ghoul, 55, said. "I do not know whether it is safe to ride a car or walk.''
Traffic stopped each time aircraft appeared and people got out of their cars, fearing another rocket attack. "We believe in fate,'' Khaled Jondia, 33, said. She was selling baby clothes in Shajia market when yesterday's attack happened.
In Jerusalem, Israeli police set up more checkpoints in Arab neighbourhoods, searching people and checking their identity cards.
Yesterday's attack - in retaliation for the worst suicide bombing in six months, which killed 16 people on a bus in Jerusalem on Wednesday - came after the funeral of 10 Palestinians who were killed on Wednesday night by Israeli helicopters. They fired missiles at targets in Sabra, where Ahmed Yassin, Hamas's spiritual leader, lives. Hamas claimed responsibility for Wednesday's bus bombing.
Mr Sharon has served notice that he will continue to strike at suspected Palestinian terrorists as and when he chooses, whatever the damage to the road-map. Israeli officials say Hamas leaders, including Sheikh Yassin, are not immune from retaliation.
Nabil Amr, the moderate Palestinian cabinet spokesman, blamed the government of Israel for starting the tit-for-tat violence after the Aqaba summit, attended by President George Bush, which endorsed the road-map.
"As a Palestinian citizen and a Palestinian Authority member, I say today's attack is deliberate. It is a new war waged by Sharon. The consequences will be grave. Sharon is the one who started it," Mr Amr said yesterday.
In Washington, it was announced that Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, will hold talks at the end of next week aimed at rescuing the floundering road-map plan.
The descent into violence has been a bitter blow for President Bush, barely a week after he stood alongside Mr Sharon and Abu Mazen, the Palestinian Prime Minister, in the Jordanian resort of Aqaba. The two prime ministers had embraced the plan, providing for a comprehensive two-state settlement by the end of 2005.
Mr Bush is now being criticised both at home and abroad as the plan sinks deeper into trouble. General Powell is planning new talks in Aqaba, probably on 22 June, with senior representatives of Russia, the UN and the EU, co-sponsors of the road-map with the US .
But their room for manoeuvre, diplomats say, is very limited. Mr Bush is in a position familiar to many US presidents who have wrestled unsuccessfully with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - he is facing a choice between giving up on an initiative that seems doomed to fail, or committing himself even more intensely, with no guarantee of success.
His predicament is compounded by complaints from Capitol Hill and the Israeli lobby there at what is seen as undue pressure on Israel, target of an unusually blunt presidential rebuke after its attempt to assassinate Mr Rantisi on Tuesday. That attack followed the killing of four Israeli soldiers in Gaza. In response to Israel's attack, Hamas launched the suicide bombing in Jerusalem, drawing yet more deadly reprisals from Israel.
Mr Bush said he was "deeply troubled" by the strike against Mr Rantisi, which was said to be in breach of an understanding reached with Mr Sharon at the Aqaba summit. In doing so, however, the White House has stirred up trouble at home.
In thinly veiled criticism of a president who has hitherto been a firm champion of Israel, the powerful pro-Israeli lobbying group, AIPAC, said the Jewish state had to fight terrorist groups, and "it should be American policy to support such actions".
On Capitol Hill too, Democrats in particular have gone after Mr Bush, arguing that if the US had the right to go after terrorists, then Israel had a similar right to defend itself. Force was "100 per cent justified", Robert Wexler (POS), a Florida Democrat, declared. The domestic pressure on Mr Bush, as he seeks to make inroads into the Jewish vote for the 2004 presidential elections, only emboldens Israel to defy him.
Such is the frustration in Washington that some senior law makers are even advocating that Nato forces be sent in to keep the two sides apart. But, US officials say, that is unlikely to be acceptable to Israel.
Maybe we should let the Democrats win this one.
A peaceful coexistance with Israel is not a consideration nor a goal sought by Arab interests.
Duplicitous statements otherwise must be regared as such.
Yes. I believe the Israelis have been to gentle and I believe they should go to the hospital and kill the SOB that they missed yesterday. Kill all the terrorist and anyone who advocates terrorist acts.
He needs to strike at the unholy demon that lives in the chief terrorist, the man who invented Middle Eastern terrorism, Yassir Arafat. The violence will not end until Arafat is ended.
OK, in the interest of equal time I had better quote Sherman, who would understand perfectly the situation that the Israelis find themselves in.
"War is the remedy our enemies have chosen, and I say give them all they want."
"As a Palestinian citizen and a Palestinian Authority member, I say today's attack is deliberate.
Fuh-effing- duh ! Ya think??
Becki
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