The White House on Friday denied any US support for Israel's assassinations of Palestinian activists, a day after Vice President Dick Cheney said Israel had "some justification" for its so-called "targeted killings."
Spokesman Ari Fleischer sought to clarify Cheney's comments that bitterly angered Palestinians and complained that the vice president's words had been taken out of context, said AFP.
"What the vice president was reflecting on is how both parties see justification in the actions they take. It is the policy of the United States to oppose these killings," Fleischer told reporters.
"What the vice president was suggesting is Israel sees justification for their actions. The Palestinians see a justification for their actions."
In an interview with the Fox News Channel on Thursday, Cheney was asked about the controversial policy, which drew international condemnation -- led by the United States -- after a raid Tuesday claimed the lives of left two young boys and sent tensions between Israel and the Palestinians to new heights.
"In Israel, what they've done, of course, over the years, occasionally, in an effort to preempt terrorist activities, is to go after the terrorists. And in some cases, I suppose, by their lights it is justified," Cheney replied.
"If you've got an organization that has plotted or is plotting some kind of suicide bomber attack, for example, and they have hard evidence of who it is and where they're located, I think there's some justification in their trying to protect themselves by preempting," he added.
"Clearly, it would be better if they could work with the Palestinians and the Palestinian Authority and the terrorists of whatever stripe could be headed off and imprisoned and tried, rather than having them actually assassinated," he said.
Israeli forces on Tuesday struck the West Bank town of Nablus, killing five Hamas members, a journalist, and two young boys whose mother was visiting a clinic in the building where the Islamist resistance movement had its office.
The raid drew international condemnation, even from the US State Department, where spokesman Richard Boucher declared: "We're against this practice of targeted killings and we're against this particular attack."
On Friday, a top Palestinian official said that Cheney had effectively encouraged Israeli "assassinations" with his comments.
"Cheney's remarks certainly do not serve the peace process but rather encourage Israel to continue acts of killing and assassinations. Such policy would only lead to explosion across the region," Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s aide, Nabil Abu Rudeina, told AFP.
Cheney's commented surprised Ali Abunimah, vice president of the Washington-based Arab-American Action Network who said they gave Israel "if not a green light, at least the orange light" to assassinate Palestinians.
On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Colin Powell described Israeli’s policy of assassinations as aggressive, stressing that such operations widen the “cycle of violence.”
Since the September 2000 eruption of the latest Palestinian uprising against 34 years of Israeli military occupation, the media has reported that Palestinians have killed at least 128 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 international media reports, Israeli soldiers and armed Jewish settlers have killed 13 Arab Israelis and at least 538 Palestinians with weapons ranging from machineguns and tanks to US-made Apache helicopter gunships and F-16s.
According to an Amnesty International report issued early this year, nearly 100 of the Palestinians killed were children. In addition, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society has reported over 14,000 Palestinians wounded.
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)
