Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Editorial: Worse than 'heavy-handed' / An indiscriminate Israeli attack hurts peace

Thursday, July 25, 2002

President Bush retreated into diplomatic code-language Tuesday when he instructed the White House to criticize as "heavy-handed" Israel's indiscriminate attack on a neighborhood in the Gaza Strip, which killed more than a dozen people including nine children.

It was left to an aide to tell reporters that the president was "visibly angry" when he learned that an American-made F-16 fighter dropped a one-ton, laser-guided bomb on the Al Daraj neighborhood in Gaza City. And another piece of the puzzle was added by the White House press secretary, who characterized the operation as a "knowing attack against a building in which innocents were found."

Like his predecessor Ronald Reagan, another visceral supporter of Israel who had to be provoked into criticizing the Jewish state, Mr. Bush may believe that less is more when it comes to condemning an operation that, however indiscriminate, was aimed at assassinating someone Israel blamed for suicide attacks against its civilians.

In this case, however, the condemnation should have involved more matter and less art. Yes, there is a moral difference between targeting civilians and killing them as a foreseeable side effect of the assassination of a terrorist. But it's not a difference that justifies the Israeli operation in Gaza, not morally and not politically.

It is very possible that more, not less, innocent blood will be shed because of this reckless raid, not just in the form of retaliation against Israel but in the prolongation of a conflict that lately had seen some faint signs of progress.

As Secretary of State Colin Powell and (in his better moments) President Bush have made clear, neither Israel nor the Palestinians can achieve a total victory in their conflict. The only hope is for a "two-state" solution in which Israel coexists with a Palestinian state and fundamentalists on both sides are forced to scale back their territorial and theological ambitions.

Like the suicide bombings it purported to avenge, Israel's overkill in Gaza places more roadblocks along the road to that inevitable resolution. Clearing them away might have been easier if Mr. Bush had been more forthright in his condemnation