Israel pledged on Friday a “war to the bitter end” against Hamas but an opinion poll showed a majority of Israelis oppose the stepped-up attacks on leaders of the militant Islamic group. With his peace “road map” threatened by Israeli-Palestinian violence that has killed 38 people in two days, President Bush planned to send a veteran U.S. diplomat to Israel this weekend to try to stem the bloodshed. In the latest violence, gunmen fired at an Israeli car near the Jewish settlement of Neve Tzuf in the West Bank, wounding two women, one of them seriously, witnesses said. “As a government responsible for the security of its citizens, we must wage a war to the bitter endbecause no one else, at least at this stage, will do it,” Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Zeev Boim told Army Radio. But a poll in the Yedioth Ahronoth daily found 67 percent of Israelis wanted what the survey termed the “assassination policy” to stop, at least temporarily, to give new Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas a chance to grow stronger. Keeping up pressure on Hamas, which opposes the existence of the Jewish state, Israel launched a helicopter missile strike in the Gaza Strip on Thursday that killed seven people, including senior militant Yasser Taha, his wife and one-year-old daughter. Full Story
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