Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged the international community and Palestinian Authority to issue “strong, unequivocal condemnations” of a West Bank settlement attack that killed five members of an Israeli family.
Dismissing Palestinian statements as “stuttering and weak,” Netanyahu said today in Tel Aviv that he wouldn’t “allow acts of terror to determine the map of Jewish settlement” in the West Bank.
The violence, the first fatal attack since August 2010, came as the Middle East Quartet, which is made up of the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia, sent representatives to try and get Israel and the Palestinians to resume peace talks that stalled in September.
Negotiations halted when Netanyahu refused to extend a partial 10-month construction freeze in the West Bank settlements and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said he wouldn’t continue talks unless the building was halted.
“I expect the international community to make a strong, unequivocal condemnation of this murder, the murder of infants. I have seen countries rush to the Security Council to condemn Israel because it plans a home or lays a tile,” in the West Bank, Netanyahu said. “I expect them to condemn this attack immediately.”
Abbas issued a condemnation today against “all acts of violence against civilians” and called for an acceleration of talks to find a “just solution to the conflict.”
Al-Aksa Martyrs
The Palestinian leader also called Netanyahu to express his regret, Netanyahu’s office said. The prime minister told Abbas that his condemnation was insufficient and must be followed by acts to stop anti-Israel incitement in schools and mosques, according to the office statement.
Soldiers were searching for at least one Palestinian after the Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade, the armed wing of the Palestinian Fatah movement, claimed responsibility for the killings in a statement that called the violence “the natural response to the massacres of the fascist occupation against our people.”
Defense Minister Ehud Barak urged the army to use all means to find those who carried out the attack. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman instructed the country’s UN delegation to file a “strong complaint” with the international body.
The parents of the family from the West Bank settlement of Itamar were stabbed to death along with three of their children aged 11, 4, and 4 months, Netanyahu said. Three other children survived including the oldest, 14, who was at a youth group meeting at the time of the attack.
Restraint Calls
Itamar is a settlement of about 1,000 residents that was founded in 1984. It is about 60 kilometers (37 miles) northeast of Tel Aviv.
Statements from the White House press secretary and the United Nations condemned the attack. The UN statement urged “all to act with restraint.” Quartet representative Tony Blair called the killings “shocking and deplorable.”
The stabbings came three days after Netanyahu warned Jewish settlers against reacting violently to the dismantling of illegal outposts. Israel has said it plans to demolish all settler outposts built illegally on private Palestinian land by the end of 2011.
Danny Danon, a lawmaker from Netanyahu’s Likud party and deputy speaker parliament, blamed the attack on Barak’s “lax security policies” and lifting of roadblocks in the West Bank to ease Palestinian travel.
“I call on the defense minister to deal with the security of Israeli citizens instead of delusional political initiatives,” Danon said in a phone interview. “If we have to choose between the comfort of the Palestinians and Jewish lives, I will choose Jewish lives.”
The Itamar attack was the first since August 2010, when gunmen fired from a vehicle and killed four Israelis, an army spokeswoman said, speaking anonymously according to regulation.
Israel has built about 120 settlements in the West Bank since the late 1960s. Another 100 smaller settlements, which Israel calls outposts, were built without government authorization during the past decade.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-03-12/netanyahu-urges-international-condemnation-of-west-bank-murders.html
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1 comment:
“They Murder, We Build.” Says Netanyahu. I wonder if the esteemed prime minister has ever considered that if Israeli had destroyed the enemy's capacity to wage war against civilians, that there would have been no murders? Every time Israel caved in to yet another insane demand from the U.N. For a cease-fire, the Arabs commit more murder and mayhem against Jews. Lest we forget, Hamas leaders were laughing at the Israeli government while they were calling the last big “ceasefire” a “victory for the Palestinian resistance”. According to The Jewish Press, the spokesperson for Hamas, Muhammad Abdul-Al issued a press release saying, “We are humiliating the Israelis. They kept threatening to make a huge operation in Gaza, but they were the ones who begged us to go into the ceasefire.” The terrorist further stated that because of the rocket attacks they went into the truce from a position of “force and power” and that Hamas viewed this agreement as an opportunity to regroup and bring more weapons in from the Sinai. Pusruing peace with murderers must be Israel's secret weapon, because every time the Israeli government emmisary says “let's do another cease-fire” another Arab dies laughing. Http://soulfulthought.blogspot.com
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