Israel’s security cabinet, which convened Tuesday as a three-week-old ceasefire seemed near breakdown, decided not to change its so-called "policy of restraint" toward the Palestinian Authority (PA), reported Haaretz newspaper.
However, certain measures aimed at “preventing terror attacks would be intensified,” said the paper.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Monday that his security cabinet had considered unleashing a "total offensive against Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's PA in a bid to stop Palestinian attacks.”
Public radio quoted him as saying that the cabinet had instead opted for a policy of "active self-defense," in an apparent reference to the assassination of suspected Palestinian activists by Israeli forces.
Israeli helicopters fired on a car in the West Bank on Sunday killing three Palestinians, including a militant long near the top of Israel's most-wanted list.
Late last month, another Palestinian militant was blown up while using a public phone in the West Bank that the Palestinians say was booby-trapped by Israeli secret services.
Sharon, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, Finance Minister Sylvan Shalom and senior military and intelligence officials were present at Tuesday’s meeting.
During the meeting, Sharon attacked Arafat for not taking measures to end the violence.
In this vein, the paper said, the cabinet decided to initiate a PR campaign against Arafat, with the aim of portraying him as the one responsible for violating the US-brokered ceasefire which went into effect in mid-June.
After the meeting, Shalom told Israel Radio that Arafat was trying to get the world used to the fact that the ceasefire meant "two dead (Israelis) per day."
The meeting followed the discovery of the body of a Jewish settler overnight near the Soussia settlement in the West Bank's Hebron area.
The dead man, Yair Har-Sinai, a shepherd in his 50s, had gone missing the day before.
His body showed signs of violence, a military source said, cited by AFP.
In other incidents, Haaretz said that two mortar bombs were fired at two settlements in the Gush Katif complex in the Gaza Strip, causing no casualties.
Meanwhile, hardline Interior Minister Eli Landau, speaking on public radio, called for Arafat to be officially declared the “head of a terrorist organization that must be destroyed.”
Deputy Defense Minister Dalia Rabon-Filosof, for her part, said, "We are facing terrorism. For the moment our sole choice is to try to stop attacks by targeted raids, and we are holding back on destroying the terrorist infrastructures," AFP quoted her as saying.
Since the outbreak of the latest Israeli-Palestinian conflict last September, CNN reports that Palestinians have killed over 112 Israelis with weapons ranging from stones and knives to machineguns and car bombs. Israeli military sources have reported well over 600 injuries to Israelis of Jewish descent.
In the same time period, according to CNN, Israeli soldiers and armed Jewish settlers have killed 13 Arab Israelis and over 458 Palestinians with weapons ranging from machineguns and tanks to US-made Apache helicopter gunships and F-16s.
According to Amnesty International, nearly 100 of the Palestinians killed were children.
In addition, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society has reported over 14,000 Palestinians wounded, and over 520 killed.
Jewish author Noam Chomsky, who according to a New York Times Book Review article is “arguably the most important intellectual alive,” has been quoted as saying: “State terrorism is an extreme form of terrorism, generally much worse than individual terrorism because it has the resources of a state behind it.” - Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
