GAZA CITY/AMMAN, 13 November 2006 — The Hamas government in Palestine yesterday blasted the US veto of a UN Security Council resolution condemning an Israeli artillery barrage that killed 19 people in the Gaza Strip Wednesday. “This decision by the American administration clearly means the granting of absolute legitimacy to the massacre and slaughter committed by the occupation forces against the Palestinian people,” Ghazi Hamad, the spokesman for the Hamas-led government, said in a statement.
“This decision means granting the occupation government continuing protection and cover with no limit for its crimes that they commit against innocent civilians in Palestine.” Palestinian militants, meanwhile, vowed to deal with the US as an enemy after the veto.
“America participates with the enemy in these aggressions and we will deal with America as an enemy,” Abu Mujahid, a spokesman for the militant Popular Resistance Committees, said in a statement.
Israeli artillery shells slammed into homes in the north Gaza town of Beit Hanoun before dawn Wednesday, resulting in the death of 19 Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children.
Israel on Saturday hailed the US veto as “very satisfactory” while a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said it would “encourage Israel to continue its escalation against the Palestinian people.” The text of the draft resolution would have condemned the deadly Israeli raid as well as Palestinian rocket firing from the area, but Washington dismissed it as biased, sparking the fury of Arab states.
Meanwhile, prominent Jordanian lawmakers and Islamic leaders too blasted the US veto, calling it a “justification” for fresh violence and extremism in the region.
“The US veto is tantamount to a justification for, and legalization of, fresh violence, extremism and terrorism in the region,” Mohammad Abu Hudaib, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee at the lower house of Parliament, told Arab News.
“We are surprised to see the Neocons at the White House resort to such behavior despite the violent reaction they suffered from the American people as a result of their foolish policies,” Abu Hudaib said.
He referred to the loss of majority at the two houses of Congress by President George W. Bush’s Republican Party in the midterm elections last week. “They are committing more mistakes, a development that exacerbates hatred against Americans in the region and insults the moderate and pro-US states which seek to re-establish peace” between Arab countries and the Jewish state, said Abu Hudaib, a pro-government legislator.
The Secretary General of Jordan’s largest political party, the Islamic Action Front (IAF) Zaki Bank Ershaid said, the US veto represented “fresh evidence supporting our viewpoint that there will be no alternative for jihad and resistance as means for ending the Israeli occupation and breaking the blockade imposed on the Palestinian people.”
“The use of the US veto anew to prevent condemnation of the Zionist entity proves Washington’s total bias with Israel and creates new pretexts for fresh violence and targeting American interests in the region,” Ershaid said.
“It also provides fresh evidence that the theory of negotiation and dialogue has failed in the light of the transformation of US institutions into tools in the hands of new Zionists,” he said.
— With input from agencies
