“Spain weeps for the victims of terror”, is the front-page headline in the Herald Tribune (25/3), dedicated to the funerals held in Madrid for the 190 identified victims of the terrorist attacks of 11 March. Katrin Bernhold, in her accompanying article, stresses that the new Spanish Prime Minister, José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, on this tragic day for Spain, announced that “he would not abandon the task of combating terrorism in order to bring Spanish foreign policy into line with the requests of electors (…). After decades of regional terrorism, Spanish electors have always backtracked on the anti-terrorism measures taken by successive governments. But they have never identified the war in Iraq as a struggle against terrorism. Many believe that the war has made the world less secure. Others go further, thinking that their involuntary participation in the campaign has made their own country an objective of international terrorists”. The killing of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, spiritual leader of Hamas, is commented on by Le Monde (23/4), which wonders what the magnitude of this event may be for the whole Middle Eastern scenario. “On the announcement of his death says the summary of the article signed by Stephanie Le Bars Palestinian militants took to the streets (…), promising ‘vendetta’ on Israel. The Palestinian Prime Minister has condemned the assassination as ‘an insensate and very dangerous act’. The US State Department has appealed to all sides in the conflict to ‘give proof of restraint’. For its part, Hamas has announced, ‘for the future’, measures that, it vowed, would cause ‘hundreds of Israeli victims”. “Israel in all-out war on Hamas”, is the headline carried by La Croix on 23/3, emphasizing that “ the assassination of Sheik Yassin has overturned the strategy of Hamas”. “Many Hamas leaders have already been struck by targeted attacks”, notes Elio Maraone in the Italian Catholic daily Avvenire (23/3), “but all this so far seems to have contributed very little to containing the offensive of terrorism (…). The risk is that Israel, instead of shutting its enemies out, will shut itself into a fortress of walls and armoured vehicles”. The problems in Kosovo and the Israeli raid against Sheik Yassin are the most discussed stories in the German press. “ Kosovo has reverted to the situation in which it was back in 1999, when it was placed under the protection of the international administration“, says the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (22/3). “ For too long, distracted by its fear of terrorism and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the EU has ignored the problems of the Balkans. This neglect is however also the result of a certain irresolution, which has a name: Kosovo. No one has the courage to pose the question about the status of Kosovo“, writes Martin Winter in the Frankfurter Rundschau (24/3). On the Israeli raid, Heribert Prantl writing in the Süddeutsche Zeitung (24/3) comments: “ Criticisms here [in Germany] can hardly understand the threat to the existence of a State in which the politicians and the military don’t want to stand around waiting for their children and grandchildren to be blown to bits on the street. Those who in our country speak perfidiously of the ‘Nazi methods’ of the Israelis, exculpate the history of National Socialism while sitting in a restaurant or an office that no one is about to blow up. They also have the pretence of putting the desperately mistaken policy of the Israelis on the scales to counterbalance the holocaust“. “ If Sheik Yassin had departed this life in a peaceful way, no one, from Cairo to Ramallah to Amman, would have wept over his death“, writes Michael Stürmer in Die Welt (23/03). “ But his death also forces moderate Palestinians to show a mistaken solidarity; it is turning Gaza into a vipers’ nest and will cost Israel yet further bloodshed“. “New antiterrorist plan”: that’s the announcement in the Spanish daily El Periódico (24/3), according to which “the measures of the government and of the ruling socialist party imply greater control over people and goods, greater protection of objectives and better information on Islamic networks”. “Controls need to be stepped up on the factories, deposits and transport of explosives, and cooperation tightened between the National Police Force, Civil Guard, Catalan police (Mossos d’Esquadra) and Basque police (Ertzaintza), and also with the local police”. “ The measures will affect controls over hotels, airport activities, fishing boats and religious centres”. The daily ABC (24/3) declares that “Al Qaida is here” in an article by Valentí Puig in which he argues that “ while ETA is seeking the destruction of Spain, Al Qaeda seems to have begun an offensive for the ‘lebanonization’ of Europe”. The author maintains that “even before the intervention in Iraq, Bin Laden was launching threats against Spain that refer to the golden age of Islam in Spain, Al Andalus, which ended with the re-conquest of Granada”. Puig reinforces the idea that “the infrastructure of Al Qaeda in Spain is not a minor reality” and points out that “ fundamentalist totalitarianism has no frontiers”.———————————————————————————————————– Sir Europa (English) N.ro assoluto : 1283 N.ro relativo : 23 Data pubblicazione : 27/03/04
