Mr Newt Gingrich, one of the most powerful politicians in the US, yesterday gave Israel his backing to take military action against Palestinian militants and said the US needed a "tougher anti-terrorist strategy".
As Israel braced for the possibility of more bomb attacks, Mr Gingrich directed fierce condemnation towards Mr Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority.
Speaking on Fox News Sunday, the Speaker of the House of Representatives said Israel had the right to take whatever measures it saw fit to protect its citizens from atrocities such as last week's suicide bomb attacks.
"Israelis have every right to protect themselves, they have every right to go after Hamas," he said. "The United States should come down firmly on the side of protecting innocent citizens and opposing terrorism and flatly let it be known in the Middle East that we will be supportive of steps needed to protect innocent Israelis."
Mr Gingrich said he backed whatever steps Israel needed to impose to protect its citizens. "If that includes raids into Palestinian territory, if that includes arresting some of the Palestinian Authority leaders who themselves have engaged in terrorist acts, whatever steps have to be taken ought to be taken and the Palestinian Authority should know it's only going to survive within a framework of security," he said.
Meanwhile, the US Immigration and Naturalisation Service said it did not know that one of the men charged with plotting to bomb New York subways was a suspected Islamic extremist when he was released from custody in February.
"We had no information whatsoever this man was a terrorist," Mr Brian Jordan of the INS said.
The mayor of New York, Mr Rudolph Giuliani, complained on Saturday that the INS should not have allowed Mr Abu Mezer (23) to be released after he asked for asylum on grounds that Israel would persecute him as a suspected terrorist.
Mr Mezer and Mr Lafi Khalil (22) were arrested on Thursday morning in a raid on a Brooklyn apartment where five bombs were found.