WASHINGTON, DC — In response to earlier inquiries by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), the Bush Administration assured ADC officials of its opposition to the campaign by the Israeli government of assassinating Palestinian activists and political leaders.
In his letter to Ziad Asali and Khalil E. Jahshan, ADC’s President and Vice President respectively, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs David M. Satterfield emphasized that “The United States Government has made it clear to Israel that we are against such targeted killings.” Some Israeli spokesmen have been alleging that Israel has Washington’s acquiescence to its policy of “active self-defense.”
Satterfield assured ADC that in the Administration’s view “these actions inflame an already volatile situation, make it that much harder to restore calm, and impede efforts to bring about full implementation of the Mitchell Committee’s recommendations.” He added that “The Department of State has been closely monitoring Israeli actions and will continue to do so.”
The letter by Satterfield was in response to an ADC letter to President George W. Bush dated July 31, 2001, expressing outrage at the escalation of Israeli aggression against the Palestinians represented by the extra-judicial execution in Nablus which took the lives of eight civilian Palestinians, including two children, Ashraf and Bilal Khader, aged five and eight.