Israel Insight

THE ISSUE

In recent days, both President
George W. Bush and British Prime
Minister Tony Blair have indicated
support for a Palestinian state as part
of a comprehensive solution to the
Israeli/Palestinian conflict. This has
raised several concerns in Israel and
in the American Jewish community.

BEHIND THE ISSUE

One concern about the Bush/Blair
statements is that they would be
seen by those Palestinians who sup-
port using violence and terror to
achieve diplomatic gains as a reward
for that position. Another concern
is that granting more Palestinian
sovereignty could weaken Israel's
already limited ability to defend
against Palestinian suicide bombers,
car bombs, Palestinian mortars and
other offensive weapons.

— Allan Gale, Jewish Community
Council of Metropolitan Detroit

EYE FOR AN EYE from page 19

10/19
2001

20

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we better continue to move towards
calm and renewed negotiations."
Likewise, Knesset member Issam
Makhoul of Hadash, Israel's
Communist Party, sought to equate
the assassination of Ze'evi to Israel's
policy of targeted killings.
"I have warned that assassinations
are assassinations, whoever carries
them out," Makhoul said.
Some of Ze'evi's opponents, however,
lauded him. "You were an opponent
who was a friend and a friend who was
an opponent," said Meretz leader Yossi
Sarid, whose dovish positions on the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict could hardly
have been more distant from Ze'evi's.
The Palestinian Authority "cannot be
silent when confronted with the spilled
blood of" Ze'evi, Sarid said, "and it
must carry out particularly sharp meas-
ures to suppress the murderers. No
more dodging and no more avoiding."
Yet Israel, too, "faces a particularly
difficult test," Sarid said, recalling the
attempted assassination of Israel's
. ambassador to London, Shmuel
Argov, in 1982, which sparked Israel's
invasion of Lebanon to eradicate
Palestinian terror groups. Israel ended
up occupying southern Lebanon for
18 years, losing hundreds of soldiers.
"We recall the hasty beginning but
not the bitter end" of that episode,
Sarid said. It is necessary to remem-
ber everything, the entire lesson:0