WASHINGTON, April 10 (UPI) -- Nearly a week after President George W. Bush demanded Israel and the Palestinians halt fighting, the violence in the Mideast worsened Wednesday and a former Israeli prime minister told U.S. senators that a political settlement is hopeless.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer deflected questions about whether the United States should take action to force the Israeli Defense Force to halt its invasion of the West Bank, telling reporters: "The president has made abundantly clear that he believes in Israel's right to defend herself. The president has also indicated, regardless of the type of weaponry, that the time has come that Israel should pull back."
Fleischer was responding to a report in the Washington Post Wednesday that Germany has suspended arms sales to Israel to protest the attacks on towns and refugee camps. The bulk of the IDF's most advanced weapons are U.S. and there have been calls for the United States to warn Israel about arms sales as a way to get the invasion halted.
But Fleischer appeared to reject any get-tough action with Israel.
"Israel remains America's friend," he said. "America remains a trusted ally and partner of Israel, a democracy. And in that process, the president will continue to make clear to all parties what he believes the obligations are in order to achieve peace."
Earlier Wednesday, Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister who is a strong supporter of Israeli right-wing Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, told a group of senators that "there can never be a political solution for terror," which seemed to reject the very assignment that Bush sent Secretary of State Colin Powell to the Middle East to effect.
"There can never be a political solution for terror for a simple reason. The grievance of terrorists can never be addressed through political concessions," Netanyahu said. "If you offer terrorists political concessions, you encourage them to engage in more terror."
He said that Israel should do three things:
-- "Dismantle (Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser) Arafat's terrorist regime and expel Arafat from the region."
-- Clean out extremists, weapons and explosives from all militant areas.
-- Build physical barriers, such as walls, separating Israel from Palestinian areas.
Several senators, including California Democrat Diane Feinstein said they agreed with Netanyahu's conclusions.
The hard-line former prime minister's remarks came as the IDF suffered 13 soldiers killed in an ambush Tuesday and eight civilians killed by a suicide bomber on a bus on Wednesday.
Bush was noticeably silent on the crisis on Wednesday. He has repeated demands for a halt in fighting for five days and was effectively ignored by Sharon and Arafat. Though the IDF appeared to be pulling out of its incursions Tuesday, the suicide bombing in Israel seemed to change that intention Wednesday.
An angry Netanyahu praised Bush's war on terrorism but directed veiled criticism at the administration for not treating Arafat as a terrorist. He said the criticism leveled at Israel for trying to stop the bombings of civilians was "shameful."
James Zogby, a leading spokesman for Arab-American interests in the United States, angrily rejected Netanyahu's assessment saying he "tells more lies" than any other man Zogby had ever debated. He said he deplored the fact that the U.S. Senate chose to give the former official a platform.
