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Cheney Says Israel's Assassination Policy Justified
WASHINGTON, Aug 3 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Israel's controversial policy of assassinating what it calls "terrorists" appeared to get a cautious nod of approval from the White House late Thursday, as U.S. Vice President Richard Cheney said he saw "some justification" to these strikes.
But the remarks also revealed a certain dissonance between the White House and the State Department on the hotly disputed subject.
"We're against this practice of targeted killings and we're against this particular attack," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said earlier Thursday.
Tensions between Israel and the Palestinians have reached a new high following an Israeli helicopter strike in the West Bank town of Nablus on Tuesday that killed four Hamas activists, two journalists and two young boys who happened to be close by.
Even as the international community - including the EU and the U.S. - condemned the attack, Cheney offered an assessment of the event that appeared to be closer to Israel's line of argument.
"If you've got an organization that has plotted, or is plotting, some kind of suicide bomber attack, for example, and they have hard evidence of who it is and where they're located, I think there's some justification in their trying to protect themselves by preempting," Cheney told Fox News television.
Nabil Abu Rudeina, a senior advisor to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat told the French news agency AFP (Agence France-Presse) that Cheney's remarks encourage Israel to kill.
"Cheney's remarks certainly do not serve the peace process, but rather encourage Israel to continue acts of killing and assassinations. Such [a] policy would only lead to explosion across the region," he said.
Many Palestinians expressed anger at Cheney's remarks, as leaders censured Washington for failing to play a more decisive role in halting the region's descent into violence.
Rudeina joined other Palestinian leaders, including Arafat, Friday in stepping up their diplomatic offensive to see international observers deployed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a move that many world leaders feel will alleviate the violence.
The Palestinians backed up their diplomatic push by placing an appeal on the official Wafa news agency requesting Palestinian activists not to attack Israelis with bombs and guns for fear of tarnishing their international image, saying stone-throwing was a more effective tactic.
Cheney said he was aware that Israel had repeatedly asked the Palestinian Authority to take action against suspected activists.
He said the Israelis had gone forward and launched strikes to preempt activities in the past when the Palestinians had failed to respond to these requests.
"And in some cases, I suppose, by their lights it is justified," Cheney said of the Israelis.
But the vice president said he would prefer to see Israel and the Palestinians resume security cooperation.
"Clearly, it would be better if they could work with the Palestinians and the Palestinian Authority, and the terrorists of whatever stripe could be headed off and imprisoned and tried, rather than having them actually assassinated," Cheney said.
According to the State Department, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell discussed the deadly strike with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Wednesday.
"The secretary expressed our concerns about the rocket attack on the apartment building and about targeted killings, in general," said Boucher.
On Tuesday, the State Department denounced the Nablus attack as "highly provocative" and a "new and dangerous escalation of violence" in the Middle East conflict.
But in what amounted to a veiled rebuke to the State Department, the influential chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Joseph Biden (D-DE), said Thursday that any differences between Israel and the United States be "aired privately".
"There is an effective declared war" between Israel and the Palestinians, the senator warned.
The visiting Speaker of the Israeli Knesset, Avraham Burg, said that with Palestinian "militants" plotting new strikes against Israel, Israel saw no alternative to preemptive strikes.
"What should I do as a leader?" he asked in an interview with ABC's "Nightline" program. "Wait for these people to come to kill my kids?"
At the same time, he appeared to imply that Israel was forced to adopt this course of action by a lack of fresh U.S. diplomatic initiatives in the region.
"We understand that if the United States of America is not coming forward with some solutions for the Israeli public, some answers to what to do... what should Israel do?" said Burg.
But while the State Department continued to insist that it had "active diplomacy in the region," the White House seemed to signal a hands-off approach.
"There is one mechanism to stop the violence, and that is for the parties to stop the violence," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer pointed out.
Meanwhile, in the Occupied Territories on Friday, Israel sharply restricted access to the al-Aqsa mosque compound in east Jerusalem to prevent any flare-up of tensions surrounding weekly prayers at Islam's third holiest mosque, Israeli police told news agencies.
The restrictions were denounced by Abdel Malek Dehamsh, an Arab Israeli MP, quoted on the radio as saying they were a "serious attack on [Muslim] religious freedom" and would further heighten tension. "No one will force us to renounce our right to pray" at the mosque, he said.
Meanwhile, Egypt has sent an urgent letter to U.S. President George W. Bush warning that the escalating Israeli-Palestinian conflict could trigger turmoil throughout the Middle East, the official Middle East News Agency (MENA) reported Friday.
"President Hosni Mubarak sent an urgent letter to U.S. President George Bush dealing with the deteriorating situation in the occupied territories and Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people," it said.
Also in Cairo, Palestinian minister for international cooperation Nabil Shaath labeled the U.S. president as "lacking in experience and competence," MENA reported Friday.
"President Bush mistakenly believes that the power of the United States means it can do whatever it wants," Shaath said in a telephone interview with Egyptian national radio, cited by MENA.
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