 | AP forgot to put sneer quotes around "legitimate". I guess their sneer quoterator is in the shop. |
The Palestinians' new Hamas leaders called the attack a legitimate response to Israeli "aggression." | Or maybe not. Looks like it works just fine. Hmmmm. |
The response by Hamas leaders represented a sharp departure from the previous Palestinian leadership's immediate condemnations of such attacks. "We think that this operation ... is a direct result of the policy of the occupation and the brutal aggression and siege committed against our people," said Khaled Abu Helal, spokesman for the Hamas-led Interior Ministry. Earlier, Moussa abu Marzouk, a Hamas leader abroad, told Al-Jazeera television that "the Israeli side must feel what the Palestinian feels, and the Palestinian defends himself as much as he can."
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, of the rival Fatah Party, condemned the bombing, calling it a "terrorist attack."
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Gideon Meir said Israel held Hamas ultimately responsible for such attacks because it is "giving support to all the other terrorist organizations. From our point of view it doesn't matter if it comes from Al Aqsa, Islamic Jihad or Hamas. They all come out of the same school of terrorism led by Hamas," he said. |