November 3, 2001	Saturday	Shaba’an 16, 1422

TEL AVIV, Nov 2: Israel will plough ahead with its policy of assassinating Palestinian guerillas in defiance of international criticism, Deputy Defence Minister Dalia Rabin Philosof told army radio on Friday.

“We will continue these operations of interception because they pemit us to avoid bloody attacks on Israel,” Philosof said, in the aftermath of a string of Israeli assassinations.

In particular, Philosof applauded the killing of two Hamas members in Tulkarem Thursday, whom Israel accused of plotting a “terror” attack.

“With this operation, we neutralised a real human bomb,” she said, alluding to Hamas’ track record of suicide bombings.

On the same day as the latest assassination, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who was visiting Israel, urged Israel to comply with international law, an implicit criticism of Israel’s policy of extra-judicial killings.

PLEA TO ARAFAT: Radicals urged Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority to free men jailed at Israel’s behest, during a rally on Friday in Gaza City to denounce Israel and Britain’s role in creating a Jewish state.

At the demonstration attended by around 300 people, Al-Khalas National Islamic Party issued a statement urging the Authority to “release all fighters from all political parties” and warning against further political arrests.

Al-Khalas, joining supporters of the closely-linked Hamas as well as loyalists of Arafat’s Fatah faction and other groups, also condemned the Balfour declaration.

On Nov 2, 1917, then British foreign secretary Arthur James Balfour wrote a letter to British Jewish leader Lord Rothschild saying his government viewed “with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

Israel was created three decades later, leading to the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to the Arab countries and elsewhere.

The Palestinian Authority has arrested an estimated 20 to 30 activists from different political factions since guerrillas assassinated Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Zeevi on October 17.

But the government of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has demanded more than what it calls a token effort at arrests before it withdraws from Palestinian territory invaded since the assassination.—AFP