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Jewish settler killings blight new Mideast talks
Palestinian leaders committed to the peace process joined Israel and the United States in condemning the attack and said direct Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, suspended for 20 months but due to resume this week, would not be derailed.
Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, opposes the peace talks and is not taking part. It says Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who controls the West Bank, is a “traitor” for talking to the Israelis about a peace deal. Obama is staking precious political capital on the drive to resolve a conflict now over six decades old, and the Washington talks were engineered by his Middle East envoy George Mitchell.
“This kind of savage brutality has no place in any country under any circumstances,” US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters in Washington as she met Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Abbas, who was due to dine with Obama and Netanyahu ahead of the talks, condemned “any operation that targets civilians, Palestinians or Israelis.”
“We are not looking for excuses not to move forward. We want to move forward in peace, and we hope that no one else is looking for excuses,” said Mark Regev, Netanyahu’s spokesman.
The four Israeli settlers, two men and two women, one of them pregnant, were shot dead after nightfall on the busy Highway 60 close to the West Bank city of Hebron. The road is used by both Palestinians and Israeli settlers.
Hamas’s armed wing, Izz el-Deen al-Qassam, said in a statement it took “full responsibility for the heroic operation in Hebron.”
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