Mideast situation/Attacks – Letter from Israel

Letter dated 8 May 2003 from the Permanent Representative of Israel

to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General

  I am writing in order to draw your attention to the latest act of Palestinian terrorism perpetrated against the citizens of Israel.

  On Monday, 6 May, shortly before 10 p.m. (local time), two Palestinian terrorists murdered a 27-year-old civilian, Gideon Lichterman, when they shot at the victim’s vehicle as he drove north-east of the community of Shvut Rachel. Security forces found his bloodied vehicle riddled with 10 bullet holes. Lichterman’s six-year-old daughter and a third passenger, aged 25, were critically injured in the attack, both sustaining gunshot wounds to the head. The assassins perpetrated the attack using an M-16 and a Kalashnikov rifle. The military wing of Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement claimed responsibility for the attack.

  Last November, Esther Galia, a mother of seven, was shot and killed in a terrorist shooting in the same area.

  Yesterday’s attack coincided with the start of Israel’s national Memorial Day, which remembers those who have lost their lives in defence of the State, and in the course of hostile attacks against its citizens. 

  In the wake of this memory, and our hopes for a real peace between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples, Israel calls upon the Palestinian leadership to take vigorous actions to reject the use and promotion of terrorist tactics. All efforts at peaceful reconciliation are doomed to failure without the permanent cessation of Palestinian terrorism as a fundamental precondition to the advancement of a process of negotiations, and the achievement of a just and sustainable peace.

  We call on the Palestinian side to join us in our efforts to promote a secure and peaceful region, by eradicating inflammatory incitement from Palestinian religious, educational and political institutions, and by dismantling and de-legitimizing terrorist groups operating freely in its territory. The Palestinian leadership must also apprehend terrorists and their supporters and hold them accountable for their crimes, in accordance with international obligations, Security Council resolutions and its own signed agreements.

 Israel calls upon the international community to reaffirm its absolute rejection of terrorist tactics and to use its authority to compel all regimes that sponsor and incite terrorism in the region to fulfil their responsibilities in accordance with international law and Security Council resolutions, in particular resolution 1373 (2001).

  I submit this letter in follow-up to numerous letters detailing the campaign of Palestinian terrorism that began in September 2000, which document the criminal terrorist strategy for which the terrorists and their supporters must be held fully accountable.

  I should be grateful if you would arrange to have the text of this letter circulated as a document of the fifty-seventh session of the General Assembly, under agenda items 160 and 36, and of the Security Council.

(Signed) Dan Gillerman
Ambassador

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