McCain visits Sderot, backs Israeli response to rockets (3rd Roundup)

Mar 20, 2008, 7:04 GMT

Jerusalem - US Republican presidential hopeful John McCain Wednesday expressed understanding for Israel's tough response to near daily rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip, as he visited the country's battered southern town of Sderot.

If his state of Arizona was attacked from across the border, its citizens too would advocate a 'very vigorous response,' he told reporters as he toured the town.

Sderot, located some two kilometres from the Gaza Strip to the north-east, has borne the brunt of more than 7,000 locally-produced Qassam, al-Quds and Nasser rockets fired from the Gaza Strip since the attacks started in 2001, about one year after the Palestinian uprising erupted amid a deadlock in peace negotiations.

'It's unconscionable that young children should suffer from PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) from attacks of as many as 900 rockets, one on an average of every two hours, for the last three months,' mcCain said, as he was led around the town of more than 120,000 inhabitants by Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak, accompanied also by US Senator Joseph Lieberman.

Receiving a warm welcome, McCain held a series of talks with Israeli leaders during his lightning visit to Israel, meeting also Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Opposition Leader Benjamin Netanyahu Wednesday, after calling on President Shimon Peres shortly after arriving Tuesday afternoon.

He also put a note Wednesday in Jerusalem's Wailing Wall, the holiest shrine in Judaism, amid chaotic scenes of crowds scuffling and pushing to get close to him. And a day earlier he toured Jerusalem's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, writing 'I am deeply moved. Never again' in its guest book.

He did not visit the Palestinian autonomous areas, causing some resentment, and a senior Palestinian official demanded a clarification for a remark he made in Jordan earlier Tuesday, in which he was quoted as expressing support for Israel's claim to Jerusalem as its capital.

'By making a statement on the future of Jerusalem, he has legitimized the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem and placed himself in obvious contradiction with international resolutions,' Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior aid to President Mahmoud Abbas, said in a statement.

'We expect an answer from the US administration, particularly since McCain is the only Republican presidential candidate,' he said.

McCain did telephone Abbas late Tuesday, expressing support for the moderate Palestinian leader and discussing ways to push the current peace process forward.

Abbas' spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, said the Palestinian president made a point of stressing to McCain that 'there will be no peace without Jerusalem, the central issue of the Palestinians.'

McCain is officially on a Congressional fact-finding mission and not on a campaign tour.

He expressed support for US President George W. Bush's effort to get Israel and the Palestinians, who picked up negotiations late last year ending a seven-year freeze in their peace process, to sign an agreement on paper before he leaves office in January.

But he said he was 'not sure' whether the parties would succeed to reach a deal in that period of time, although he did believe the Bush administration was making 'every possible effort to do so.'

The Republican candidate said in his talks with Livni he believed Abbas was keen on getting the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks going.

Since their revival shortly after a high-profile peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland in November, the talks have threatened to run aground over the Gaza violence, as well as over continued Israeli settlement construction.

Olmert, who met the Arizona senator in the afternoon, said Israel could halt the almost daily rocket fire from the Gaza Strip without a major ground offensive in the salient, as an increasing number of Israelis are demanding.

McCain, in an interview with the Jerusalem Post daily, earlier said he could not provide an answer how to halt the rocket attacks.

The main focus of the interview, however, was on Iran, which McCain said flatly 'is a threat to the region.'

He said that while Tehran was 'obviously pursuing nuclear weapons,' it was also arming and training extremists to send into Iraq, supporting Lebanon's Hezbollah and influencing Syria.

'At the end of the day, we can still not afford to have Iran with nuclear weapons,' McCain said. 'We know they have ambitions that are not just aimed at the State of Israel,' but also included 'destabilization of the entire region upon which the United States' national security interests rest.'

Hamas and Hezbollah represented a similar threat, and 'are dedicated to the extinction of everything that the US, Israel and the West believe and stand for,' he said.

In the interview, McCain also backed Israel's refusal to negotiate with Hamas.

'Someone is going to have to answer me the question of how you are going to negotiate with an organization that is dedicated to your extinction,' he said, in reference to the Hamas charter which calls for Israel to be replaced by an Islamic state in all of historic Palestine.

McCain, accompanied by Senators Lieberman of Connecticut and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, arrived in Israel from Jordan and Iraq. He leaves Wednesday night for France and Britain, the next stage of his current week-long tour.