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Israel Snubs Terrorist Settlers List, Palestinians Retaliate
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, Aug 6 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The Palestinian Authority retaliated to Israel's refusal to
take action against "death squads" and terrorist settlers by rejecting demands of the occupation forces to arrest seven alleged resistance activists, news agencies reported.
Palestinian information minister Yasser Abed Rabbo said: "The Israeli Government should arrest 50 persons...armed settlers - and they are active as terrorists and killers."
Abed Rabbo was speaking after Israel took the unusual step on Sunday of publishing a list of seven Palestinians it accuses of carrying out or planning attacks against Israeli civilians, the BBC online said.
Israeli security forces say they foiled a new attack by capturing a Palestinian allegedly planning a bombing in Tel Aviv.
Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer said the man was expecting to receive a package of explosives from a Hamas activist who was killed in an Israeli helicopter strike in the West Bank on Sunday, BBC's online
service said.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon Monday again sought to justify Israel's policy of murdering Palestinian activists.
"We adopted a policy of counter-terrorism defensive measures: interception of kamikaze, and spoiling raids and commando actions," Sharon told a meeting of Hadassah, a charitable international association for Jewish women.
One Palestinian on Israel's "hit list" was 20-year-old Amer al-Hadri who was assassinated by Israeli security forces in a rocket attack in Tulkarem, in the West Bank.
Israel had accused him of being a Hamas member and states he is wanted for murder.
On July 31st, an Israeli helicopter strike killed six Hamas members, including two senior officials, as Israel stepped up its policy of
assassinating Palestinian occupation resistance activists.
Two children were also killed in that raid.
In a meeting earlier in the day, Sharon rejected a proposal from his foreign minister, Shimon Peres, to open talks with the Palestinians to revive a shattered ceasefire.
The United States, originally the main sponsor of the so-called peace talks, called on Israel and the Palestinians Monday to take immediate steps to end
the violence and warned that failure to break the cycle of conflict "will lead to disaster."
"All parties in the Middle East need to take steps immediately to end the violence and restore calm; then we can begin implementing the Mitchell report," said Scott McClellan, spokesman for U.S. President George W. Bush.
"Both sides need to really recognize that continuing down this path will only lead to disaster," said McClellan, who declined to specifically denounce Israel's policy of
"targeted killings" of suspected Palestinian occupation resistance activists.
Bush, enjoying a month-long vacation on his ranch in Texas, received a letter from Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, said McClellan, who would not detail its contents.
Arafat adviser Nabil Abu Rudeina told AFP in Gaza City Saturday that the Palestinian leader had called on Bush, European leaders, Moscow and the United Nations to urgently intervene
in order to stop "Israeli aggression", and again called for the sending of international observers.
Arafat urged them "to intervene immediately to stop the dangerous escalation of violence in the Palestinian territories, which could drag the whole region into a serious crisis," Nabil Abu Rudeina told AFP.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher also stepped up pressure on the United States Monday, calling for it to do more to rein in Israel's assassinations.
Maher told reporters he had informed the U.S. charge d'affaires in Cairo, Reno Harnsh, that Egypt "cannot accept this Israeli behavior, which is unacceptable for any civilized state which believes in the law."
"I told him Egypt is astonished that the United States has not reacted with the necessary firmness to this Israeli behavior," he said.
Asked in Washington to comment on whether Arab states may be losing faith in the U.S. role in brokering Middle East peace, U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said: "I think we're happy to let our actions speak for themselves, that we have worked what we think is with consistent direction.
"We have heard from other Arab states in the region that they support the Mitchell committee recommendations, that they agree with us that that is the way to go."
Led by former U.S. senator George Mitchell, the Mitchell committee called for a freeze on Israeli-Palestinian violence, a halt to Jewish settlement construction and a series of confidence-building measures before the resumption of peace talks.
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