The State Department refused to comment today on an implication by Israel’s Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi that Israel would go to war to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state. “Obviously, the Israeli opposition to an independent Palestinian state is nothing new,” Department spokesman Dean Fischer said.
Shlomo Goren, the Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi, said at a press conference here yesterday that while Israel is ready to offer the Palestinians full autonomy to govern their local affairs, “we will never let them become a separate state, never. This is for us a casus belli,” he said. Websters dictionary defines “casus belli” as “an event or action that justifies or allegedly justifies war.”
Goren explained that Premier Menachem Begin has noted that a Palestinian state would pose a threat not only to those parts of Israel adjacent to the West Bank but to all of Israel’s population centers.
Meanwhile, Fischer expressed U.S. condemnation of yesterday’s terrorist attack on the Israeli Military Mission in Paris by masked men firing submachineguns.
“We condemn the terrorist attack yesterday involving machinegun fire directed at the Israel Embassy annex in Paris,” he said. “But we are relieved that no one was injured.”
Reports from Beirut today said an obscure Lebanese group calling itself the “Armed Revolutionary Factions” claimed responsibility for the Paris attack. It is the same group which claimed responsibility for the murder of the U.S. Military Attache in Paris, Col. Charles Ray, last January and the attempted assassination last November of the acting U.S. Ambassador in Paris, Christian Chapman.
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