An Israeli general threatened Thursday to launch "tanks and helicopters" against the Palestinians if there is a confrontation between them and Israel in the aftermath of the failure of the Camp David peace summit.
Speaking on public television, General Moshe Yaalon, commander of the central region, which includes the Palestinian-populated West Bank, referred to the Israeli military response in May to violent protests there marking the foundation of Israel.
That resulted in 10 Palestinian deaths, while no Israelis were killed.
"I hope the lesson from those incidents has been learned and the potential of what we have not yet launched remains. We have not yet fired from helicopters, we have not yet fired from tanks," Yaalon said.
But, he concluded, "if they force us to, we will use all of that." -- OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
