Now all out US santioned assassination. What have we become?
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/04/19/1082357118446.html
Israel to target Hamas in exile
By Ed O'Loughlin, Herald Correspondent In Jerusalem
April 20, 2004
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Following this weekend's killing of the Hamas leader, Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi, the Israeli Government plans to resume targeting enemies living in countries beyond its control, according to reports from the Israeli cabinet.
Israeli Army Radio reported that a cabinet minister, Gideon Ezra, told Sunday's meeting the next target would be Hamas's main leader in exile, Khaled Meshaal, who lives in the Syrian capital, Damascus.
"The fate of Khaled Meshaal is the fate of Rantissi," Mr Ezra told the meeting. "The minute we have the operational opportunity we will do this."
The threat comes at a time when Israel feels it has received a free hand from its main ally, the US. Sunday's cabinet meeting was the first since last week's summit in Washington, when Israel received US agreement to its demand for the unilateral annexation of Palestinian territory in the West Bank and its denial of any right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes in Israel.
According to reports in the Israeli media, Sunday's cabinet meeting duly moved to reinstate and accelerate the Israeli Government's original planned route for its barrier inside the West Bank.
Plans to loop the barrier deep inside the occupied territory to carve out big Jewish settlement blocks were dropped before a recent hearing on the legality of the project at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
According to media reports, the salients into the West Bank have all been reinstated following President George Bush's written assurance that Israel will be able to keep big settlement blocks in any final solution.
Palestinians, human rights groups and United Nations reports have all strongly criticised the route of the barrier, saying it amounts to the unilateral annexation of large chunks of Palestinian territory and will severely disrupt the lives of hundreds of thousands of West Bankers who will be cut off from jobs, homes, schools, farmland, schools and hospitals.
Israel says that the 600-kilometre complex of walls, fences and cleared fire zones is designed solely to prevent attacks, which have killed hundreds of Israeli citizens.
The Israeli Government announced last month that it no longer felt bound by a promise to the US not to kill the chairman of the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat, who remains under de facto house arrest in his office in Ramallah.
Israeli ministers have also made numerous threats to assassinate the leader of the Lebanese Islamic resistance group, Hezbollah, which Israel, the US and Australia - but few other countries - officially regard as a terrorist organisation.
