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Posted on 10/04/2001 3:39:19 PM PDT by CommiesOut

WRAPUP 1 - Sharon says Israel won't roll over for U.S.

    By Jeffrey Heller 
    JERUSALEM, Oct 5 (Reuters) - Israeli leader Ariel Sharon 
said after a Palestinian shooting attack that U.S. efforts to 
win Arab support for a war on terrorism would not stop Israel 
from taking "all necessary measures" to defend its citizens. 
    "Do not try to appease the Arabs at our expense," the prime 
minister said at a news conference on Thursday after a 
Palestinian gunman, posing as an Israeli soldier, killed three 
people at a bus station in the northern Israeli town of Afula. 
    Israel's national mood darkened further after an Air Sibir 
plane with 66 passengers, many of them Russian-born Israelis, 
and 12 crew crashed in the Black Sea on a flight from Tel Aviv 
to Novosibirsk, Siberia. 
    A U.S. official said there was "every indication" it was 
shot down by a Ukrainian surface-to-air missile during a 
military exercise in the area. Ukraine denied it was to blame. 
    The attack in Afula dealt another blow to whatever is left 
of an Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire jolted by violence this week 
that included a raid on a Jewish settlement and a retaliatory 
Israeli incursion into a Palestinian-ruled area of Gaza. 
    Washington has applied intense pressure on both sides to  
end a year of bloodshed as it tries to draw Arab and Islamic 
countries into an anti-terrorism coalition to respond to last 
month's attacks on the United States. 
    But Sharon said: "All our efforts to reach a ceasefire have 
been torpedoed by the Palestinians. The fire did not cease, not 
even for one day. 
    "The (security) cabinet has therefore instructed our 
security forces to take all necessary measures to bring full 
security to the citizens of Israel," he said, referring to 
orders issued on Wednesday. 
 
    ISRAELI DEFENCE CHIEF CALLS ON ARAFAT TO ACT 
    Israeli diplomatic sources said the army would once again be 
allowed to carry out track-and-kill attacks against Palestinian 
militants -- an internationally condemned policy Israel had 
stopped under last week's ceasefire deal. 
    "Until (Palestinian leader) Yasser Arafat confronts terror 
with all his might, meaning he will prevent it and arrest 
(militants), I see no chance at all for any peace and 
stability," Israeli Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer told 
reporters. 
    The official Palestinian news agency Wafa said the PLO 
Executive Committee, at a meeting chaired by Arafat, called on 
Palestinian factions to respect the ceasefire fully "out of 
concern for the higher national interest". 
    In the divided West Bank town of Hebron, Israeli troops shot 
dead a 28-year-old Palestinian man and wounded three children, 
Palestinian witnesses said. The Israeli army said it was 
responding to Palestinian fire. 
    Elsewhere in the West Bank, Israeli forces entered 
Palestinian-controlled territory and extracted two Jewish 
settlers who strayed into a Palestinian village, a spokesman for 
the umbrella YESHA Council of Settlements said. 
    There were no reports of injuries in the incident. 
    At least 615 Palestinians and 173 Israelis have been killed 
since a Palestinian uprising against occupation erupted a year 
ago. 
     
    ISRAEL WON'T ROLL OVER FOR ANTI-TERROR ALLIANCE - SHARON 
    At the news conference, a defiant Sharon signalled that 
Israel would not roll over for its guardian ally, the United 
States, as the anti-terror coalition-building gathers steam. 
    "Do not repeat the dreadful mistake of 1938, when 
enlightened European democracies decided to sacrifice 
Czechoslovakia (to the Nazis) for a convenient, temporary 
solution," Sharon said. 
    "Israel will not be another Czechoslovakia; Israel will 
fight terrorism." 
    Israelis, he said, "have only ourselves to rely on, and as 
of today, we will only rely on ourselves". 
   Speaking at the same news conference, Israeli Transport 
Minister Ephraim Sneh said procedures at Tel Aviv's Ben-Gurion 
airport, one of the most security conscious in the world, had 
been re-examined after the Russian plane crash. 
    He said no fault was found in the security checks of the 
ill-fated aircraft and passengers. 
    "At this stage we have no evidence sabotage was involved," 
Sneh said after take-offs, suspended for four hours following 
the crash, resumed at the airport. 
    Asked about reports a Ukrainian missile might have shot down 
the plane during a military exercise, he said: "We have no clear 
indication this is what happened." 
    Sharon called the crash "a heavy tragedy" for Israel and 
Russia. 
    He said he had spoken by telephone with Russian President 
Vladimir Putin and both agreed Israel and Russia would cooperate 
fully in investigating the cause of the crash. 
    It was the second time in recent months that Israel's large 
community of immigrants from the former Soviet Union was 
counting its dead. Last June, a Palestinian suicide bomber 
killed 21 people, many of them Russian-speaking teenagers, at a 
Tel Aviv disco. 
 ((Jerusalem newsroom, 972-2-537-0502, 
jerusalem.newsroom@reuters.com)) 
    
 
 
04 OCT 2001 22:33:27

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