International protests poured in Saturday over Israel's continuing policy of assassinating Palestinian militants, but the Jewish state remained unabashed over its policy, ignoring calls for an end to the "massacres" and facing threats of imminent revenge.
Five Palestinian schoolchildren were blown to pieces Thursday in what has been blamed on an Israeli army booby-trap, then Israeli assassinated a leading Palestinian militant, Mahmud Abu Hannud, and two associates on Friday.
In total, 12 Palestinians were killed over Thursday and Friday.
Israel endorsed its assassination policy Saturday, ignoring Hamas threats of "hard and imminent" revenge, with officials saying the killing was a major success in the dirty war to end attacks on Israeli targets.
Israel has an avowed policy of targeting Palestinians it suspects of having carried out or of planning attacks on Israeli targets. Some 60 of them have been killed since the outbreak of the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, against Israeli occupation in September 2000.
The incidents cast doubts over whether two top-level US envoys being dispatched to the region Sunday will have any success in efforts to broker a durable ceasefire in the conflict.
US Assistant Secretary of State William Burns and retired Marine Corps general Anthony Zinni are to leave Washington Sunday for the Middle East in an attempt to restart dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians.
Their dispatch comes after a dramatic Monday night speech by US Secretary of State Colin Powell which heralded a robust new US approach to end the 14 months of Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed.
Reactions from the Palestinian leadership and from around the region would suggest that the prospects are dim, following the latest outbreak of killing.
France was the first major Western power to weigh in on Israel's assassination of Abu Hannud.
Its foreign ministry denounced the killing as a "particularly unwarranted and irresponsible act at a time when violence is decreasing and parties are being called upon to begin talks again to establish a ceasefire."
However, the United States shied away from public comment on the cusp of its new peace push.
Nonetheless, a senior US State Department official said Washington's general position on Israel's policy of targeted assassinations had not changed.
"We don't think it's a good thing to do," the official said. "We oppose targeted killings and we have made our views on this clear to the Israelis."
Regionally, Jordan condemned what the official Petra news agency quoted Foreign Minister Abdel Ilah Khatib as calling the Israeli policy of "assassinating and murdering innocent people."
Khatib noted that the "Israeli escalation comes at the moment when international diplomatic efforts are being deployed to put an end to the violence and to get the peace process back on track."
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher said that Israeli actions over the last two days represented an "open challenge" to US peace proposals.
Qatar, which hosted Israeli officials at this month's World Trade Organisation conference, blasted "Israel's savage and inhumane attacks," the official QNA news agency reported.
"These attacks are contrary to the principle and ideas announced by US Secretary of State Colin Powell."
Ignoring the violence, Saudi Arabia's Defence Minister Sultan bin Abdul Aziz expressed "confidence in the new US engagement in the Middle East.
"We have great confidence in them to bring about a just peace within the framework of the Charter of the United Nations and the resolutions of the Security Council," he told reporters.
The Palestinian national leadership accused Israel Saturday night of deliberately trying to wreck a fresh peace push, after the death of a dozen Palestinians in two days.
"Israel's bloody policy of terror these last few days is an indication of its deliberate wish for military escalation," the Palestinian leadership said in a statement from Gaza City.
For his part, Arab League secretary general Amr Mussa said Israeli policies "of destruction" harm the chances of success in the mission of the two US envoys.
"I don't think that they can perform their mission while the Israelis are continuing to destroy and kill in the occupied territories," Mussa told reporters in Cairo.
There was condemnation too from Tehran, as the Iranian government pointed to what it called the terrorism of the Israeli army, notably the "massacre of women, children and Palestinian leaders," the official IRNA news agency reported.
(China Daily November 25, 2001)
