Jewish Peace Group's Response to Jericho Raid

Gush Shalom Press release, March 14, 2006

At this moment in Jericho, the main elections gimmick of the Kadima Party and its leader Ehud Olmert is taking place with hundreds of Israeli soldiers and Palestinian prisoners drafted to serve as extras. This gimmick, designed to draw extreme right votes in the March 28 elections, shows Kadima as an adventurist and irresponsible party in whose hands it is dangerous to entrust the helm of state” says Gush Shalom (The Israeli Peace Bloc).

In cooperation with the governments of the US and Britain, whose removal of their observers from the Jericho Prison proves them utterly incapable of any mediation role between Israelis and Palestinians, PM Olmert and Defence Minister Mofaz are carrying out a provocation which will only exacerbate the conflict and hatred. Theirs will be the full responsibility for bloodshed of Israelis and Palestinians, in the course of the Jericho provocation itself and in the cycle of retaliation upon retaliation which may follow.

It should be noted that the people which the army was sent to Jericho to capture or kill are marked out because, when taking revenge for the targeted killing of their own leader, they did not kill innocent civilians. They selected Rehav’am Ze’evi, a general turned politician who was the foremost of Israeli racists and who built a political career upon crude hate propaganda. A targeted killing…”