WASHINGTON, April 18: President Bush's open endorsement of an Israeli plan for suppressing the Palestinian resistance encouraged Israel to assassinate the new Hamas leader
, US media reported on Sunday.
"Just back from a visit to the White House armed with a green light from President Bush to implement his plan on how to deal with the Palestinians, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon lost little time," observed a US news agency, UPI, while commenting on Dr. Abdel Aziz Rantissi's assassination on Saturday.
"Ariel Sharon's new initiative, endorsed by President Bush, is a scheme to better manage the conflict, not to make peace. Targeted killings will be a big part of that," warned the Newsweek magazine.
"The killing came three days after a White House meeting in which Israeli Prime Minister Sharon and President Bush vowed again to wipe out Palestinian terrorism," said the Washington Post.
"There was an understanding that Israel had the right to defend itself and that American officials understood that Dr Rantissi, like Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the previous Hamas leader who was killed by Israel last month, was guilty of involvement in attacks on Israel," the New York Times reported.
The reports also noted that the White House's reaction to Dr Rantissi's killing was a "guarded expression of concern." Instead of an outright condemnation of the Israeli action, the Bush administration chose to "strongly urge" Israel to exercise restraint the reports said.
Most US newspapers also noted that the White House saw the Israeli assassination attempts as acts retaliation for Palestinian attacks on Israeli targets.
The New York Times, however, quoted a senior administration official as saying that the Bush administration was surprised and dismayed over the killing and had in no way given approval of any plan to take his life in the Bush-Sharon meeting.
The newspaper said that other officials in the Bush administration were concerned that "Arabs would get the impression that because of the Sharon-Bush meeting, the United States approved of these sorts of attacks on Palestinian leaders."
Another newspaper said the Bush administration recognized Israel's right to take retaliatory actions, but wants Israel also to take the adverse political consequences of such actions into account.
"You kill the leader of Hamas, and then you kill the leader of Hamas," another senior official told the NYT, expressing some exasperation at Israel's killing of two Hamas leaders within a month. "At some point, you're going to have to think more carefully about the consequences of these actions."
