Gulf Press Outraged by Gaza Massacre
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Two-month-old Dunia Matar was killed by the Israeli strike
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RIYADH,
July 24 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Saudi and other Gulf
newspapers were outraged Wednesday, July 24, by the Israeli air strike
on Gaza that killed 15 people, terming it a “war crime” bound to
fuel violence in the region.
Monday
night’s “massacre is not just an abhorrent terrorist act, but also
a continuation of Israel's policy of liquidating” Palestinians,
wrote Saudi Arabia’s Okaz.
“The
Zionist entity [Israel] under the rule of butcher [Prime Minister]
Ariel Sharon has not abandoned its plot that began since this entity
was planted in the body of the Arab world” in 1948, the paper said.
The
English-language Riyadh Daily described the Israeli raid as a
“cold-blooded attack.”
“Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is a happy man. He has congratulated his
forces for having successfully bombed an apartment building in
Gaza,” killing 13 civilians, nine of them children.
According
to the Agence France-Presse (AFP), other Saudi dailies, not content
with the U.S. criticism of Israel’s “heavy-handed action,”
blasted Washington for failing to forcefully condemn “Sharon’s war
crime.”
“The
whole world was shocked by this ugly massacre, but it failed to move
the conscience of the U.S. administration that has been applying
tremendous pressure on the Palestinian Authority and backing the
Israeli aggression,” Al-Bilad said.
“The
massacre committed by criminal Sharon in Gaza ... is a war crime that
has crossed the last red line,” Al-Yom said.
Elsewhere
in the Gulf, the Qatari newspaper Al-Raya charged that Sharon’s
government sought to “plunge the region in a new phase of
violence” by “dropping a one-ton bomb on Palestinian children.”
Arab
states should sever all ties with a government “whose only agenda is
to torpedo the peace process and kill any hope for the establishment
of a Palestinian state,” the Doha-based daily said.
In
the United Arab Emirates, Al-Bayan predicted “more crimes” by
Sharon so long as Washington portrayed him as “a man of peace.”
Accordingly,
it has become necessary to “call off Arab (peace) initiatives and
rethink current attempts to rein in Palestinian fighters,” the
Dubai-based daily wrote in a reference to pressures on Palestinian
militant groups to halt suicide bombings against Israeli targets.
The
Oman newspaper in Muscat agreed that the Palestinians have a
“legitimate” right to resort to “any means” to resist the
occupation by Israel, “a criminal entity that does not want
peace.”
The
air strike on Gaza City killed the military chief of the Palestinian
resistance group Hamas, and 14 civilians, including nine children, in
addition to injuring 150 civilians.
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