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Israel Vows War on Hamas
EFL and New news
JERUSALEM - Israel pledged on Friday a "war to the bitter end" against Hamas but an opinion poll showed a majority of Israelis oppose the stepped-up attacks on leaders of the militant Islamic group.
If the JPost asked their readers I bet you'd get a different attitude
With his peace "road map" threatened by Israeli-Palestinian violence that has killed 38 people in two days, President Bush planned to send a veteran U.S. diplomat to Israel this weekend to try to stem the bloodshed.
Not poor Zinni, I hope?
In the latest violence, gunmen fired at an Israeli car near the Jewish settlement of Neve Tzuf in the West Bank, wounding two women, one of them seriously. "As a government responsible for the security of its citizens, we must wage a war to the bitter end (against Hamas) because no one else, at least at this stage, will do it," Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Zeev Boim told Army Radio.
Pretty much clear on the concept
But a poll in the Yedioth Ahronoth daily found 67 percent of Israelis wanted what the survey termed the "assassination policy" to stop, at least temporarily, to give new Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas a chance to grow stronger. Keeping up pressure on Hamas, which opposes the existence of the Jewish state, Israel launched a helicopter missile strike in the Gaza Strip on Thursday that killed seven people, including senior militant Yasser Taha, his wife and one-year-old daughter. At their funeral processions on Friday, gunmen fired in the air and a Hamas loudspeaker blared: "God's revenge is coming soon and the Zionists will pay the price of their crimes."
"We pledge Dire Revenge™..."
The army issued a statement expressing "sorrow over the death" of Taha's family.
But not over Taha...
In separate incidents near the West Bank city of Jenin, gunmen killed an Israeli civilian buying charcoal in a Palestinian village and soldiers shot dead two militants. Hamas' armed wing claimed responsibility for the Israeli's death. On Wednesday, helicopter gunships killed four militants and seven bystanders in Gaza, after a Hamas suicide bomber killed 17 on a Jerusalem bus, an attack that followed the wounding of senior Hamas figure Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi in a missile strike. In what it called a message to "terrorists and their accomplices," the army demolished the family house of the Jerusalem bus bomber, Abdel-Mua'ti Shabana, 18, in the West Bank city of Hebron, leaving nine people homeless. The army also destroyed another militant's home in the West Bank village of Dura.
Posted by: Frank G 2003-06-13
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=15401