Unidentified gunmen wounded wanted Fateh activist Hazem Natcheh, 22, in an assassination attempt in the West Bank city of Hebron on Wednesday, Israel Radio reported.
The incident, in which Natcheh was shot in the abdomen and back, occurred shortly after the Israeli security cabinet met to discuss its policy of "active defense,” anchored by targeted killings of wanted Palestinians, a policy which the US has rejected as “not right.”
Natche’s wounds were initially described as not life-threatening, said the report, quoted by Haaretz.
The shooting was carried out close to Israeli territory in Hebron's Policeman Square. The radio report said it was not immediately known if the gunmen were Israeli undercover troops or Palestinians settling internal scores.
But Palestinians, according to the report, said the attempt on Natche’s life was “Israeli work.”
"We think this policy is not right and we've said that many times, made that quite clear I think," said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said of such assassination attempts on Tuesday. "We've made clear our opposition to it, publicly and privately."
The spokesman was asked to comment on a meeting of the Israeli security cabinet in Tel Aviv Tuesday, during which top Israeli officials decided to continue the practice of liquidating Palestinian activists.
Three Palestinian activists were killed in the West Bank on the night from Sunday to Monday, despite a ceasefire agreement that took effect June 13.
The State Department criticized 'targeted killings,' an apparent euphemism for assassinations, on Monday.
According to Haaretz, the Israeli army was previously only permitted to assassinate "ticking bombs," meaning those who are actually en route to commit a major attack.
The new guidelines allow it to “act against known terrorists even if they are not on the verge of committing a major attack,” it said.
A security source explained: "In places where we have asked the Palestinian Authority to work to foil attacks and it is not doing so, we will have to act in its stead."
The cabinet also agreed that because of the continued violence, Israel will continue to postpone implementing some of its obligations under the ceasefire agreement: Restrictions on Palestinian traffic, for instance, will remain in place throughout much of the West Bank, it said.
Boucher, meanwhile, insisted that Israel, the Palestinians and the United States continued to cooperate on security matters.
"There was a security meeting last night, a trilateral meeting with the parties that was quite constructive, we think," he said. "And there will be another one soon."
The spokesman did not specify who took part in the meeting or when the next one would take place, said AFP.
"We're looking to do everything we can to work with the parties to try to get them to calm the situation," he said.
Since the outbreak of the latest Israeli-Palestinian conflict last September, CNN reports that Palestinians have killed over 112 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 CNN, Israeli soldiers and armed Jewish settlers have killed 13 Arab Israelis and over 458 Palestinians with weapons ranging from machineguns and tanks to US-made Apache helicopter gunships and F-16s.
According to Amnesty International, nearly 100 of the Palestinians killed were children.
In addition, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society has reported over 14,000 Palestinians wounded, and over 520 killed.
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)
