The Bush administration said Monday that Israel’s policy of pinpoint killings of Palestinians was inflaming the Middle East conflict and urged the Israelis to alleviate what it called the humiliations of the Palestinian people.
In sterner terms than those used by President Bush days earlier, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said “Israel needs to understand that targeted killings of Palestinians don’t end the violence but are only inflaming an already volatile situation and making it much harder to restore calm.”
Boucher was referring to Israel’s policy of seeking out and killing Palestinian leaders it says had plotted or supervised terrorist acts. Hours before he spoke, Israeli helicopters fired missiles on the offices of Mustafa Zibri, the head of a militant Palestinian faction who also WAS known by the name Abu Ali Mustafa. The attack killed him and set off protests by thousands of Palestinians.
In declaring that such slayings of Palestinians were “only inflaming an already volatile situation and making it harder to restore calm,” Boucher went beyond remarks made Friday by Bush who merely called upon the Israelis to show restraint.
Boucher repeated the administration’s frequent appeal to the Palestinian Authority to take “sustained and credible steps” to arrest those responsible for terrorism.
But what was perhaps most striking was his strongly worded appeal to Israel to soften its hard-line policy toward the Palestinians.
“If the situation on the ground is to improve, then Israel must also stake the economic and security steps that are necessary to alleviate the pressure, the hardship and the humiliations of the Palestinian population,” Boucher said.
Boucher did not spell out what action the United States expects to see. During the 11 months of this Palestinian uprising, Palestinian towns and villages frequently have been shut off from one another by Israeli soldiers on the grounds that this helps to prevent terrorist attacks.
