State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher explains why blowing up Israelis
different than blowing up Americans
DAILY PRESS BRIEFING
Richard Boucher, Spokesman
Washington, DC
September 27, 2001

...

QUESTION: To what extent does this campaign -- as you constantly review your
Middle East policy, what -- how much influence does this campaign against
terrorism have in that? What's the input? How does it weigh in here? See
what I mean?

MR. BOUCHER: No, I don't.

QUESTION: It's obviously a factor --

MR. BOUCHER: We have talked about this on and off over the last few days. We
recognize that there is an influence. Some have said it affects the
atmosphere, the Palestinian/Israeli issues affect the atmosphere of
cooperation. But, essentially, there are, on some planes, two different
things. One is that there are violent people trying to destroy societies,
ours, many others in the world. The world recognizes that and we are going
to stop those people.

On the other hand, there are issues and violence and political issues that
need to be resolved in the Middle East, Israelis and
Palestinians. But we all recognize that the path to solve those is through
negotiation and that we have devoted enormous efforts to getting back to
that path of negotiation.

And we have called on the parties to do everything they can, particularly in
the present circumstance, to make that possible.

I guess that's about as close as I can come to the kind of sophisticated
analysis I'm sure you will want to do on your own. But they are clearly
issues that are different, not only in geography but also, to some extent,
in their nature.