Palestinian Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyya, said Tuesday that the Unites States’s view of a new Middle East begins with "destroying Lebanon" and killing the maximum number of Palestinians, the Middle-East online news website reported.
Haniyya said that the Palestinian government condemns the American position that “gives the green light to the occupation to continue its aggression.” The statements of Haniyya came during a Palestinian cabinet session on Tuesday.
"We ask the American administration to stop its blind support for the occupation,” Haniyya stated, “We ask them not allow the continued killing of children, women and old people by American weapons used by Israeli on Palestinian and Lebanese lands.”
Haniyya added that “it seems the American view starts by destroying Lebanon and killing the maximum number of Palestinians.”
Haniyya slammed the Israeli military escalation in the West Bank and Lebanon and added that Israeli F16 fighter jets are targeting civilian houses and killing children.
Israel has killed more than 380 people, mostly civilians, in Lebanon in its two-week-old offensive that it said was to destroy Hezbollah and recover two soldiers captured by the Hezbollah fighters.
A total of 42 people have died in Israel in the past two weeks, the latest being a 15-year-old Arab Israeli girl whose house was hit by a rocket.
At least 116 Palestinians, most of them civilians, including children, were killed by the Israeli army since Israel launched its “Summer Rains” offensive in the Gaza Strip on June 28.
Haniyya slammed what he described as the "dangerous Israeli military aggression" that targeted mainly civilians in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.
On Tuesday, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah and said the US wants the Middle East back at the negotiations table to establish a Palestinian state living peacefully beside Israel.
Abbas demanded that Israel halt its military aggression against the Gaza Strip and start a meaningful peace process in order to end the conflict.
Palestinian chief negotiator Dr. Sa’eb Erekat said Rice promised to conduct the needed efforts to restore calm and a “mutual cease fire.”
