Israel’s kitchen cabinet decided Sunday night to continue its policy of assassinating Palestinian resistance fighters, as Israeli tanks and combat helicopters shelled PA posts in the West Bank cities of Tulkarem and El Beireh.
The kitchen cabinet is comprised of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Defense Minister Benjamin Ben Eliezer.
Haaretz newspaper reported that Sharon convened the meeting late Sunday night and decided to continue the policy adopted by the security cabinet following the Jerusalem suicide bombing that killed 16, including the Palestinian bomber.
The pan is that Israel will respond immediately to all attacks, while pursuig a policy of "active defense" in order to safeguard the roads.
The Jewish state will also continue with its policy of “targeted killings” aimed at those who are about to carry out “terror attacks.”
Meanwhile, Peres informed Sharon and Ben Eliezer of his lack of progress in attempting to set up a meeting with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, saying that no meeting had yet been set.
Sharon had called the meeting in response to criticism from within the government that Israeli retaliations, including the use of F-16 and F-15 warplanes, had been authorized by Ben Eliezer in coordination with Sharon, without receiving the approval of the cabinet, said the paper.
According to AFP, Ben Eliezer described Arafat as a "savage enemy."
"Yasser Arafat is a savage enemy. He wanders around from country to country and embraces somebody or other, while he is responsible for everything that is happening on the ground," Ben Eliezer told Labor Party activists late Sunday.
"He wants us to be flexible, but no one can expect us to remain with our arms crossed when we are threatened by the 'living bombs' (suicide bombers). We are engaged in a fight without mercy against terrorism," he said.
Israeli minister without portfolio Danny Naveh, of the right-wing Likud Party, speaking on radio, urged that pressure be increased on Arafat, "in order to stop the terrorism."
Sharon "should not meet him and give him international legitimacy. It's useless, because Arafat wants to go to Syria and unify the Palestinians in terrorism... Israel must reveal his true face; that of the head of a band of terrorists."
In the meantime, Israeli tanks shelled a Palestinian police outpost Sunday night in the West Bank town of El Bireh, near the settlement of Psagot, while US-made Apache helicopters bombed a building belonging to the Palestinian police in Tulkarem, reports said.
Palestinian sources reported that a column of tanks entered the Palestinian-controlled area near Ramallah and that three people were wounded as a result of the shelling, including a girl who sustained a head wound from shrapnel.
Palestinian sources told Haaretz that the helicopters shot seven missiles at the building in Tulkarem.
The paper said that the shelling was apparently in response to the shooting ambush on the Jerusalem-Modi'in road Saturday night that killed three people.
The head of Palestinian preventive security in the West Bank, Jibril Rjoub, said, "The Israeli troops shot five tank shells, without Palestinian provocation and without warning in advance."
Earlier, a Palestinian boy and an Israeli man were killed Sunday in the violent aftermath of early morning Israeli air assaults on Palestinian police stations.
The deadly air strikes, launched in retaliation for the killing of six Israelis on Saturday, buried anew expectations of the salvaging of a shattered US-brokered truce unveiled in mid-June.
A 14-year-old Palestinian youth was blown to pieces by an Israeli tank shell during the ongoing unrest in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian officials said on Sunday.
An unidentified Israel man was later shot dead by Palestinian resistance fighters in a parked car in northern Israel, close to the demarcation line with the Palestinian West Bank, Israeli public radio said, quoting police.
An Israeli soldier wounded in a Palestinian attack Saturday on a West Bank highway near Jerusalem has died of his wounds, hospital sources said late Sunday.
In the attack Saturday night, Palestinian gunmen opened fire on a car traveling between Jerusalem and Modiin, west of the city, instantly killing a married Jewish settler couple and slightly wounding their two young children. The soldier had been seriously wounded in the incident, said AFP – Albawaba.com
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