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U.S. Endorses Israeli Assassinations, U.S. Arab Allies Say
CAIRO, Aug 28 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Arab leaders and media sources warned Tuesday that the Middle East violence had rocketed to new heights after Israel's high-profile assassination of the leader of a Palestine Liberation Organization faction, pointing a finger at the United States.
Egypt's official press accused U.S. President George W. Bush Tuesday of giving Israel the "green light" to kill Palestinian resistance leader Abu Ali Mustafa a day earlier in the West Bank town of Ramallah, news agencies reported.
"The assassination of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) leader came just two days after Bush said Israel will not negotiate under so-called terrorist threats," Agence France - Presse (AFP) quoted the government daily paper Al-Akhbar as saying.
"It's clear to everyone that Bush gave the green light to the murderer Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister, to continue the policy of assassination and killing against the Palestinians," the editorial added.
Israeli missiles killed Mustafa on Monday; marking the first time since the beginning of the Palestinian uprising 11 months ago that Israel has targeted a top Palestinian leader with its hunt-and-kill policy.
"All this is happening with the blessing of Washington, whose president, with his controversial levels of intelligence, seems to have concluded that the best way of making peace in the Middle East is for the butcher Sharon to make his own peace with the Palestinians after killing them, a peace of the dead," the paper added.
Meanwhile, the Egyptian opposition Al-Wafd newspaper ran the story of Mustafa's death under the front-page headline, "Israel Opens the Gates of Hell," and saw the killing as a warning to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat that he could be next.
"Israel wants to tell Arafat that he too is within its arm's reach, that it could send the same Apache helicopter and the same missiles, but this time with the name Yasser Arafat written on them," a commentary in the paper said.
On the same note, Syria's leadership, the Progressive National Front (PNF), said U.S. support for Israeli policy would end up hurting American interests in the Middle East, newspapers said Tuesday.
"The leadership believes the regrettable and deceitful position of the United States on the Arab occupied territories and the region is based on erroneous and mistaken judgments," PNF announced after a meeting Monday.
The PNF, a coalition of seven parties in power, including the ruling Baath, accused Washington of "covering up" for Israel's "racist and poorly thought out policies," adding that U.S. interests would be harmed.
Arab newspapers in the Gulf also said there would be retaliation.
"The crime will not pass without vengeance," said Saudi daily Al-Jazira.
Sharon's government has put the Israeli people "on a volcano which risks blowing up at any moment," said the newspaper, which reflects official thinking.
Bahrain's Information Minister Nabeel Al-Hamer issued a statement warning that "the Israeli escalation will leader to the shedding of more blood and expose the whole region to danger."
In the United Arab Emirates, Al-Khaleej said, "The Palestinian riposte will not be long coming," but added "the war of extermination against the Palestinian people is henceforth irreversible."
"Israel has opened the way to widespread war," said the Dubai government daily Al-Bayan, urging Arab countries to offer military and material assistance to the Palestinians.
In Baghdad, Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz urged the Palestinians to use Mustafa's murder as a spur to continue the fight against occupation.
Mustafa's murder should be a "stimulant for the pursuit of the heroic struggle to conquer the plundering occupiers and to liberate Palestine from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean," Aziz said in a statement released by Iraq's official INA news agency.
Elsewhere, some 2,000 Palestinian refugees rallied in Jordan on Tuesday, urging Arab countries to open their borders with Israel to allow Muslim youths to fight the Jewish state, an AFP photographer and witnesses said.
"We urge the Arab countries to open their borders with Israel to allow Arabs and Muslims to go fight the Zionist enemy," Abdel Halim Kteishat told protesters inside Baqaa, Jordan's largest refugee camp outside Amman.
Libya also blasted the killing. "Libya condemns this abject crime and proclaims its total solidarity with the Palestinian people and the Intifada," said the General People's Congress, the country's parliament.
A coalition of hard-line Palestinian groups in Damascus, including the PFLP and the political offices of the resistance groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, swore revenge.
"We know when and how to force the enemy to pay the price for its crimes," the movements said, adding, "the Nazi Zionist enemy does not understand anything but the language of force and armed struggle."
Israel's assassination policy was approved by a cabinet meeting a few months ago, and has so far killed more than 50 Palestinian resistance activists under what Israel justifies as "active self-defense."
The latest Israeli aggression, including Mustafa's assassination, has drawn wide international condemnation.
On Tuesday, China "strongly condemned" Israel's assassination of a top Palestinian leader, accusing Israel of adopting a "strategy of cleansing."
"China strongly condemns this and expresses its condolences over Mustafa's killing," foreign ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao said, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.
"China has consistently been against all forms of terrorism, and opposes Israel's 'strategy of cleansing' in Palestine and its continuous assassinations of Palestinian leaders," he said.
Pakistan also urged the international community to pressure Israel to reverse its "policy of violence."
The killing of Abu Ali Mustafa was a "brutal extra-judicial assassination," a Pakistani foreign ministry statement said.
Meanwhile, Cuba demanded an "immediate end to Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people" Tuesday as it condemned the assassination of the senior Palestinian leader.
"This indescribable act of barbarism, in which the sophisticated weaponry the United States supplies to Israel was used, is clearly an act of bloody and repulsive terrorism," a Foreign Ministry statement said, demanding an end to Israeli aggression.
Such an act "is only possible due to the impunity of [Israel's] crimes before international institutions and the unlimited support the United States gives to this policy," the statement added.
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