OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 22 June 2003 — A day after US Secretary of State Collin Powell’s visit to the region, Israel yesterday vowed to pursue its policy of targeted assassination of Palestinians.
“There will be no immunity for ‘ticking bombs’,” a source in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s office said, referring to Palestinian fighters.
Hours later, Israeli troops killed a high-ranking Hamas official. Abdullah Qawasmeh, considered the top Hamas official in the West Bank, was killed by an elite army unit which had come to arrest him in the southern West Bank city of Hebron, an Israeli military source said.
Qawasmeh tried to flee and was shot dead, the source claimed.
Israel also pressed the Palestinian Authority to rein in those opposed to peace talks. The source at the prime minister’s office said Israel had agreed to give the Palestinians three weeks to organize forces for a crackdown on militants.
Palestinian officials did not immediately comment on the offer. But the Palestinian Authority has long demanded Israel end its assassinations, which bolster militants.
Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas fears a crackdown on militants could spark a civil war and would prefer to pursue a truce. But after meeting Powell on Friday, Abbas said cease-fire talks with militant groups led by Hamas would come to nothing unless Israel halted incursions and blockades.
Israel rejected Abbas’ approach. “A truce is in itself a ticking bomb, so it cannot last in the long run,” Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom told Israel Radio. “There cannot be a situation where the Palestinian extremists decide when this ticking bomb becomes a live and real bomb.”
Militant groups have yet to decide on a truce.
“I think the dialogue (with these groups) is over... We are waiting for the results, for (their) response,” Palestinian Information Minister Nabil Amr said.
US officials said Gaza, Hamas’ densely populated stronghold which has been subject to repeated Israeli incursions and airstrikes, was under discussion for possible transfer to Palestinian security control to advance the peace plan.
Powell made clear the road map — drafted by the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations — also depended on restraint by Israel, whose right-wing government accepted the plan under heavy US pressure.
After a Hamas bombing killed 17 aboard a Jerusalem bus last week, Israel killed six Gaza fighters using helicopter missiles. The strikes also killed at least 17 bystanders, one of whom died of his wounds yesterday, doctors said.
Hamas official Abdel-Aziz Al-Rantissi, himself wounded in an airstrike, dismissed Powell as “a little slave to the Zionists.”
US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice is expected here next week to follow up on Powell’s efforts to push the sides toward peace. The Israeli Foreign Ministry did no give an exact date.
