Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas said Tuesday that he will not crack down on armed Palestinian groups, despite being urged by America and Israel to do so.
After meeting in Cairo with Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa, Abbas was asked by reporters if he plans to dismantle armed groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, steps Israel is demanding before withdrawing its forces from more Palestinian cities.
"Cracking down on Hamas, Jihad and the Palestinian organizations is not an option at all," Abbas said before leaving Egypt to Jordan for talks with King Abdullah II. "We are applying the law which we accepted under the leadership of the Palestinian Authority, and that is what we will do."
Meanwhile, Israeli policemen fatally shot an Arab citizen, and wounded his friend in a village near the West Bank border on Tuesday afternoon. The Israelis said they thought the car the two were travelling in matched intelligence reports of a vehicle smuggling would-be bombers into Israel, Israel Radio reported.
Arab Israeli parliament members harshly criticized the fatal shooting. Ahmed Tibi said that the policemen who opened fire should be arrested and a criminal trial should be opened against them.
Tibi called the fatal shooting "a cold-blooded murder of an innocent citizen, whom I personally know, who was a victim of [the police's] itchy trigger finger towards Arabs." Tibi claimed that this is the second time in the past year that a Taibeh resident has been killed by police, Haaretz reported.
On his part, another MP, Issam Makhoul expressed shock at the killing. "This a pre-planned murder, [and the] cheapness of the lives of Arab citizens is incomprehensible."
© 2003 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
