U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, in an interview with Hemi Shalev of Israel's Ma'ariv newspaper on Thursday, agreed that terrorism need not be fought - for now:
"We have made progress. The number of [terrorist] incidents are down significantly. Even the Prime Minister [Sharon] said [this] yesterday on more than one occasion... And this is a source of relief for the people of Israel and it is an indication that there is a change. Now, nobody is going to be satisfied - neither the Israeli side nor the United States, and for that matter, nor will the Palestinian Authority... - if [we] found ourselves a year or two from now, or one month or two months or six months from now, and we still find organizations such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad that are fully capable of undertaking terrorist operations again at a time and place of their choosing... What we are arguing is how best to go about that. Some of my Israeli friends would say, 'Easy. Go to war. Take them on now. Be done with it.' Mr. Abbas and Mohamed Dahlan have a slightly different view of how best to do this. And they are concerned, and have said so, that if we try this right now, we'll create a civil war that we can't afford to have right now. So you may not like it and it may not be neat... but we're going to get started... [W]e need to show a little bit of patience and flexibility to make sure that it happens in a way that does not result in a situation that undercuts or brings down Mahmoud Abbas, because then where are we?"
Powell said that Hamas must be destroyed, and that Bush continues to emphasize Israeli security as the first priority - but he did not set a time schedule:
"I remember being asked, Can Hamas ever transform itself? We have said, and I have been in the forefront of this, Hamas is Hamas is Hamas. We can no longer make this distinction between their good works and their bad works. The only thing we're interested in now is good works. And any organization that is tainted by terrorist elements in it or a philosophy of terrorism, we can't work with. And that has to be eliminated. We won't be satisfied otherwise. In that light, we are completely in line with all Israelis and with Palestinians.
"How do you get that -- how do you get to that point? And the President, when Abbas was in there last week on Friday and they talked about settlements and they talked about prisoners... the President kept saying over and over, kept interrupting the conversation to say, 'I understand. But it begins with security.' 'Well, we need more on settlements,' [Abu Mazen said, and Bush said,] 'I understand. But it begins with security.' ... So this President, and he said it again yesterday in his press conference, nothing comes before the security of the State of Israel. And he means that."
Housing Minister Effie Eitam said that Prime Minister Sharon informed the ministers at today's Cabinet meeting that nothing about removing the obligation to fight terrorism had been hinted to him during his Washington visit last week. Minister Eitam, of the National Religious Party, told Arutz-7 today, "Sharon said that both in that which was said to him privately, and in that which the Americans said publicly, there was an unambiguous and uncompromising commitment to uprooting and destroying the terror infrastructures as a condition to the continuation of the diplomatic process."
The Housing Minister added that the issue is not only dependent on the U.S. position:
"I don't belittle the United States, but let's not forget that we have a government here in Israel, and it has decided that uprooting terrorism is an absolute condition for the continuation of the diplomatic process." He admitted that the government's position on releasing terrorists had deteriorated over the past weeks. The number of prisoners to be released - probably this week - is now up to 520, and more than half are members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
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