OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 3 November — Despite pressure from British Prime Minister Tony Blair for an easing of violence, Israel reasserted its determination yesterday to hunt down Palestinian militants saying the policy has foiled several attacks. Israel will plow ahead with its policy of assassinating militants, Deputy Defense Minister Dalia Rabin Philosof told army radio yesterday.
"We will continue these operations of interception because they permit us to avoid bloody attacks on Israel," Philosof said, in the aftermath of a string of Israeli assassinations. In particular, Philosof expressed his pleasure in the killing of two Hamas members in Tulkarem on Thursday, whom Israel accused of plotting a "terror" attack. "With this operation, we neutralized a real human bomb," she said.
On the same day as the latest assassination, Blair, who was visiting Jerusalem, urged Israel to comply with international law, an implicit criticism of Israel’s policy of extrajudicial killings.
The deputy defense minister acknowledged that the hunt to kill policy risks giving militants "more motivation" to carry out further strikes on the Jewish state. But they "weaken the technical abilities of the terrorists" by liquidating bomb-makers, she said.
But the hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon vowed in Blair’s presence to stick to the policy, which Israel has tried to liken to the US war on terror since the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington. In an apparent nod to Israel, Blair said, "I understand the pressure that Prime Minister Sharon is under, the pressure that he feels and the position of Israeli people who have seen their citizens killed by terrorist acts."
Meanwhile, on the ground, Israeli forces mounted a new incursion into Palestinian-controlled territory in the Gaza Strip, advancing 500 meters into Beit Lahiya village, Palestinian security sources said. Two tanks and two bulldozers stormed the area bordering the Jewish settlement of Dugit and began to destroy farmland, they said.
Separately, two Israeli tanks plowed 200 meters into Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, again without provocation, according to the Palestinian sources. The army also kept up its partial reoccupation of five Palestinian towns on the West Bank.
Israel’s dovish Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, meanwhile, said he supported the killings so long as they targeted militants poised to carry out attacks and not political figures. "If we have information that a kamikaze is preparing to penetrate Israel to carry out an attack, we have no choice but to stop him by all means," he told Maariv newspaper.
But he also called for the immediate closure of "particular (Jewish) settlements exposed to gunfire". Peres gave a strongly worded reply when Maariv asked if he favored dismantling any settlements. "Yes, I am in favor, and not in order to please the Palestinians, but because there are particular settlements exposed to gunfire, which have no future," Peres declared. Peres also called for a resumption of political negotiations despite the raging violence of the 13-month Palestinian uprising.
A senior US State Department official said yesterday the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation had turned into "an ongoing process of calculated terror and escalation". Deputy Assistant Secretary of State David Satterfield said Palestinian President Yasser Arafat should stop the escalation by cracking down on the Islamist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad — groups with "darker interests."
Speaking at a conference organized by the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine, Satterfield also said there was little the United States could do unless the Israelis and Palestinians took steps to reduce violence and restore confidence.
