US President George W. Bush announced on Tuesday that the United States has frozen the assets of a US-based charity and two other groups believed to be linked to Hamas. Meanwhile, world countries denounced Israeli attacks on Gaza and the West Bank on Monday and Tuesday.
"Those who do business with terror will not do business with the United States," Bush told reporters in the White House Rose Garden, joined by Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and Attorney General John Ashcroft, as quoted by the Tel Aviv-based Haaretz.
The President said that one of the organizations whose assets were being frozen was the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, based in Richardson, Texas.
The foundation says its mission is to provide humanitarian aid chiefly to Palestinian refugees around the world. But Bush said that the money is "used by Hamas in schools to indoctrinate children to become suicide bombers... to recruit suicide bombers and to support their families, " said the paper.
The President said that the Holy Land Foundation was registered as a non-profit charity with the Internal Revenue Service and had raised more than $13 million in 2000.
Calling Hamas "one of the deadliest terror organizations in the world today," Bush added that the Islamic movement was guilty of causing hundreds of deaths. He specifically cited the suicide attacks Hamas has carried out in Israel over the last week in which Israelis were killed.
Bush also said that two Americans had been killed as a result of Hamas “terror acts in the last year.”
More than 700 Palestinians, including about 100 children, have been killed by Israeli forces during 15 months of uprising against 34 years of Israeli occupation.
A US official was quoted by Haaretz as saying that the two other groups whose assets were frozen are a bank and a holding company based in areas under the control of the Palestinian Authority. He named them as the Al Aqsa International Bank and the Beit El-Mal Holdings Company.
FRANCE, TURKEY JOIN ARABS IN CRITICISM OF ISRAELI ATTACKS
Israel came under blistering criticism Tuesday as Turkey and France joined Arab states in condemning new attacks on Palestinian targets that raised fears of an all-out Middle East war, reported AFP.
But Britain joined the United States in expressing strong support for Israel and its demands that Palestinian President Yasser Arafat clamp down on militants after suicide bombings at the weekend killed at least 25 Israelis.
Turkey, Israel's main regional ally and the only Muslim-majority country in NATO, sided with Arab and Muslim opinion in blasting hardline Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for ordering harsh retaliatory strikes.
"Sharon is determined to implement very excessive, unjust measures against the Palestinian Authority," Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit said.
"If this turns into an actual war, it may lead to a situation that could be more dangerous than the one in Afghanistan, particularly for our region," he said.
The European Union also issued veiled criticism of the Israeli strikes against Palestinian Authority offices and facilities, saying that "destabilizing the Palestinian Authority would not help stop the cycle of violence," said the agency.
The Belgian presidency of the EU said in a statement that "on the contrary, the Palestinian Authority should be helped to assume all of its responsibilities under the agreements it has signed."
Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov called on Arafat to take "tough measures" against hardliners but added that Israel "must display political wisdom and restraint and not take action which would transform the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into an irreversible process."
In Paris, French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine accused the Israeli government of conducting a deliberate policy aimed at eliminating Arafat and his Palestinian Authority.
"Arafat has been weakened by the harassment of the Israeli army ... and as a result people are using his weakness as an argument to say that since he cannot reestablish order in his own camp, he should in some way be eliminated," Vedrine said.
"Sadly, it looks like a deliberate policy," he said.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell, just ahead of talks with Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres in Bucharest, was quoted as saying that Arafat had to make more of an effort to curb deadly attacks on Israel.
"Chairman Arafat can do more," Powell said. "I don't think we've seen 100 percent effort ... I think he needs to do a lot more than we've seen so far."
Analysts say that if Arafat moves behind arrests of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, a civil war could erupt in the Palestinian lands, due to the fact that Islamist and nationalist opposition groups enjoy as much support among Palestinians as the president himself.
The Arab and Muslim world denounced the latest Israeli strikes, which killed at least two Palestinians and demolished key sites of Arafat's embattled Palestinian Authority.
According to the Palestinian Information Center, close to Hamas, one of the victims is a 15-year-old child, identified as Mohammad Abu Marsa.
The other was Mohammad Ahmad Siyam, 22, from the Palestinian Preventive Security in Gaza.
In Iran, Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi said: "These attacks demonstrate that, day to day, the situation deteriorates for the Palestinian people."
The Muslim World League, based in Islam's holiest city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, condemned the Israeli attacks as "state terrorism," added AFP.
Jordan's Foreign Minister Abdel Ilah Khatib said his country would "call on behalf of the Arab countries for international protection for the Palestinians." – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
