Civilians in sights

In fact, its restraint calls simply emphasise hypocrisy of the White House, since US occupation forces in Iraq are engaged in a terrorist bloodbath directed against the patriotic resistance similar to that which the Israelis are perpetrating against the Palestinians.

Over 70 Palestinians have been killed in the first six days of the onslaught on Gaza, many of them children and people uninvolved in armed resistance.

The death toll in Fallujah and Samarra can only be guessed at, given the proclivity of the occupiers to use the same "pinpoint" bombing and rocketing used by the Israelis to target their opponents.

And the fact that US Secretary of State Colin Powell has stated that Washington has "no interest" in counting Iraqi deaths further compounds the difficulties.

In Gaza, as in Iraq, the resistance is based in overcrowded poor areas, where the use of tanks, helicopter gunships and fighter-bombers is guaranteed to produce civilian casualties.

Israel, as ever, claims self-defence and points to the two children killed by a rocket in the Israeli border town of Sderot.

Civilians, especially children, should not be targeted in any conflict, but Palestinian children have been killed in far greater numbers because of Israel's disregard for civilian casualties.

While fatalities caused by Palestinian rocket attacks against Israeli towns are rare, the deaths of children at the hands of the Israeli occupation forces is an everyday occurrence, so much so that many Palestinians assume that children are deliberately targeted as a form of Israeli state terror.

As Jabaliya deputy mayor Isa Dhahir has said, "An army that is equipped with state-of-the-art technology can easily distinguish between combatants and non-combatants.

"An army that can strike and assassinate a person driving in a small car through a crowded street can easily distinguish children and women from resistance fighters."

Israel's ongoing massacre in Gaza, together with demolition of houses and destruction of farms and orchards, is intended to dishearten Palestinians and break the will of the resistance.

Such acts fit in with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's lifelong record of terrorism against Palestinian civilian targets, which will not be halted by George W Bush's weasel words on restraint.

The Arab League is calling on Arab governments to appeal to the United Nations security council or general assembly "to halt Israel's continued war of extermination against the Palestinian people" and to urge respect for international law on the rights of people living under military occupation.

The US veto will protect Israel from the consequences of its war crimes, which makes it incumbent on the European Union, Israel's major trading partner, to decide if its words on human rights are more than simply words.

Only a comprehensive boycott, such as that imposed on apartheid South Africa, can force Israel to end its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory.