1/24/2005 2:15:00 PM GMT
Yuval Steinitz, head of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said on Monday that Israel might try to assassinate head of Hamas' political bureau, Khaled Meshaal, if Palestinian resistance fighters didn’t stop their rocket and mortar attacks on Israeli settlements.
Israel has already tried to assassinate Meshaal in Jordan on 25th October 1997.
Also, war minister Shaul Mofaz said that "Israel" would avenge the killing of a number its intelligence agents in an earlier attack by anti-occupation Palestinian fighters in the south of the Gaza Strip.
"Israel" knows how to respond to the attack and would know who had sent the saboteur to mount such an aggression as well as the organization standing behind it," Mofaz said.
Orders to shoot Palestinians approaching apartheid wall
Meanwhile, the Israeli military said it has received orders from the government to kill any Palestinian who tries to approach the apartheid separation wall in the West Bank.
Israeli occupation forces shot dead two Palestinian children who approached the wall during Eid Al Adha, the Muslims most important holiday.
The Palestinian boys were killed by the Israeli gunfire in Jenin and Qalqilya in the northern West Bank.
A spokesman for the Palestinian Authority accused Israel of provoking the Palestinian resistance fighters.
"Look, they can't allow a day to pass peacefully without shedding fresh blood," said PA official Nabil Abu Rudeina.
Abu Rudeina, moreover, called on the international community to intervene and try to stop Israel’s "criminal and murderous polices against our people."
Abu Rudeina said that killing Palestinian children just for walking along Israel’s so-called Separation Wall was an unjustified criminal act.
The Israeli military claimed that the gunfire only injured the two boys.
"The soldiers fired into the air and subsequently in the direction of his feet. Apparently one of the shots wounded the Palestinian who was unarmed."