PRESIDENT KATZAV CALLS OUT TO WEST
President Moshe Katzav and his wife visited several of the wounded in the recent terrorist attacks in the past two days, and met with French Jewish leaders. The President called upon the Western world to put an end to the backing and support it gives the Palestinian leaders, \"in order that Arafat be forced to take determined steps to end the terrorist attacks... How can we wage peace talks when a Palestinian murders an infant in cold blood with a telescopic gun? How can we explain the participation of Palestinian police in the lynching of a reserve soldier in Ramallah? How can we explain the schoolbus bombing that left orphans and maimed children? And after all this, we are supposed to prove that it is innocent and that our motives are pure... What are we supposed to think when we get up one morning, after the murder of an innocent baby, and we hear the Foreign Minister of Denmark call for economic pressures against Israel because of our policy in the territories. There is no greater absurdity than this!\"
After visiting with Yitzchak and Oriyah Pass, whose ten-month-old daughter Shalhevet was murdered by a Palestinian sniper on Monday, Katzav said that it is hard to stand up to the demands and protestations sounded against the government by the victims and their families. \"The government cannot be indifferent to what the parents of a murdered infant say,\" said the President. \"The blackest forecasts are coming true, and there are no more words left... The government must seek a new strategy, different than that which we have employed for the last few months. We can no longer rely on the Palestinians when it comes to the security of our citizens... We have reached the limit of our restraint.\"
President Moshe Katzav and his wife visited several of the wounded in the recent terrorist attacks in the past two days, and met with French Jewish leaders. The President called upon the Western world to put an end to the backing and support it gives the Palestinian leaders, \"in order that Arafat be forced to take determined steps to end the terrorist attacks... How can we wage peace talks when a Palestinian murders an infant in cold blood with a telescopic gun? How can we explain the participation of Palestinian police in the lynching of a reserve soldier in Ramallah? How can we explain the schoolbus bombing that left orphans and maimed children? And after all this, we are supposed to prove that it is innocent and that our motives are pure... What are we supposed to think when we get up one morning, after the murder of an innocent baby, and we hear the Foreign Minister of Denmark call for economic pressures against Israel because of our policy in the territories. There is no greater absurdity than this!\"
After visiting with Yitzchak and Oriyah Pass, whose ten-month-old daughter Shalhevet was murdered by a Palestinian sniper on Monday, Katzav said that it is hard to stand up to the demands and protestations sounded against the government by the victims and their families. \"The government cannot be indifferent to what the parents of a murdered infant say,\" said the President. \"The blackest forecasts are coming true, and there are no more words left... The government must seek a new strategy, different than that which we have employed for the last few months. We can no longer rely on the Palestinians when it comes to the security of our citizens... We have reached the limit of our restraint.\"