The Israeli cabinet decided Wednesday to press ahead with its controversial policy of assassinating Palestinian activists considered a threat to state security, Israeli public radio said.
Defying international condemnation of its missile attack in the West Bank town of Nablus, which left six Palestinian Hamas activists and two children dead, Israel said it would continue to target "terrorists and their commanders," the radio said, cited by AFP.
The meeting of the so-called "kitchen cabinet" -- comprising Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres -- lasted five hours, the radio said, without giving more details.
Earlier, the military wing of Fateh movement, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, threatened in a statement Wednesday to attack "Zionists and their American allies" in Israel and worldwide in retaliation for the deadliest Israeli attack since the outbreak of the Intifada.
The statement, cited by AFP, said "the fighters' weapons would be pointed towards targets inside the Zionist entity and all places where its American allies are."
The Martyrs' Brigades also vowed to inflict "a bloody international punishment on US President George Bush's Zionist clique to make it pay for its support for (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon.”
At least 100,000 Palestinians called for revenge at the funeral of six Palestinians, including five Hamas leaders who were killed Tuesday in an Israeli missile attack targeting an office in Nablus where they were having a meeting. Two 8 and 10-year old brothers were also killed while passing through the area, and their mother was seriously injured.
Hussein Al Sheikh, a Fateh official in the West Bank, told Israeli radio earlier that the Israelis would "pay a heavy price" for the Nablus attack.
"The Israeli government will have to be held responsible for the consequences of this crime", he said.
"The ceasefire is dead, and the Palestinian people are now uniting under fire in the fight against occupation,” he added.
Hamas' spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin promised to exact revenge from Israel, warning "our blood is not cheap."
The Israeli attack was widely criticized around the world. France, Britain and even the US condemned the attack.
Israel said the targeted activists were preparing attacks, but the strike was condemned by Washington as "excessive" and "highly provocative,” said the agency.
The US denounced the Nablus strike as a "new and dangerous escalation of violence."
"This attack ... is highly provocative, and makes efforts to restore calm much more difficult," a State Department spokesman said in a condemnation echoed by Paris and London.
For his part, US President George W. Bush urged both sides to "break the cycle of violence."
French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine said that "acts as provocative as the one committed today in Nablus run the risk of completely dismantling efforts to establish security cooperation."
"It's a dead end," he concluded.
Russia's Foreign Ministry said "it is very evident that violence only leads to more violence, and the inadequate use of force only deepens the hostile relations between the two sides."
The strike, described by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's spokesman Ranaan Gissin as a "surgical intervention," triggered a night of violence across the region which left at least 11 Palestinians, including a 15-month-old baby, and five Jewish settlers injured.
A total of 685 people -- 538 Palestinians and 128 Israelis -- have been killed since the uprising, Intifada, began 10 months ago. According to an Amnesty International report issued early this year, at that point, nearly 100 of the Palestinians killed were children.
Meanwhile, a Palestinian court in Nablus condemned three men to death late Tuesday for collaborating with the Israelis in the assassination of a local Fateh faction leader, while another man suspected of collaborating was gunned down by masked men near the West Bank town of Bethlehem – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
