Israel assassinates Hamas leader
msnbc.com
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip, Aug. 21 — The Mideast’s fragile truce all but shattered on Thursday, after Israel assassinated a senior Hamas official in the Gaza Strip and the main Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad declared a 7-week-old cease-fire dead. The violence dealt a blow to the U.S.-backed “road map” to peace in the region, prompting U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell to warn that both sides were heading for “a cliff” if they abandon the plan.
PALESTINIAN PRIME Minister Mahmoud Abbas called the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Abu Shanab “an ugly crime” and warned that it would make it harder to crack down on militant groups. Under pressure from Washington and Israel, the Palestinian leadership had decided on a clampdown just hours before Abu Shanab’s killing.
Abu Shanab was riding with two bodyguards in his gold-colored station wagon Thursday in Gaza City when four or five missiles fired from an Israeli helicopter hit the vehicle. The car burst into flames and three bodies were pulled from the wreckage. Fifteen bystanders were hurt.
Dozens of Hamas supporters at the scene dunked their fists in blood, raised their hands and vowed revenge, chanting “God is great.”
Israel has routinely targeted members of Hamas’ military wing but rarely gone after the group’s political leaders. Abu Shanab, a U.S.-educated professor of engineering, was the third member of Hamas’ political wing to be killed in the past two years. Israel says the distinction between political and military leaders is insignificant, because both are involved in planning attacks.
“There’s no question that there is a direct link between the heads of Hamas and the terrorists on the ground,” said Israeli Foreign Ministry official Gideon Meir, though he would not say explicitly that Israel killed Abu Shanab in response to Tuesday’s deadly bus bombing in Jerusalem.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon warned that if the Palestinian Authority “does not take all the necessary steps in the war against terror, real and substantial steps, it will not be possible to advance on the diplomatic track.”
MILITANTS SAY TRUCE IS OVER
Hamas formally called off a three-month truce it declared June 29. “We consider ourselves no longer bound by this cease-fire,” said a Hamas leader, Ismail Hanieh, after identifying Abu Shanab’s decapitated body at a Gaza City morgue.
In a separate statement, Khaled al-Batesh, an Islamic Jihad official, said Sharon “ended the truce and announced its death.”
Hamas had carried out two suicide bombings despite the cease-fire, including the Jerusalem bus attack Tuesday that killed 20 people. The group had insisted these were limited retaliations for deadly Israeli raids and not violations of the truce.
Abbas warned the missile strike would hamper the planned crackdown, saying, “This for sure will affect the whole process and the decision taken by the Palestinian Authority.” Earlier Thursday, he met with a U.S. envoy, John Wolf, to discuss the authority’s next moves.
At the United Nations, meanwhile, Powell warned that the so-called “road map” to peace was in jeopardy and called on Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to assist in the clampdown on the militant groups.
”(I) call on Chairman Arafat to work with Prime Minister Abbas and to make available to [him] those security elements that are under his control so that they can allow progress to be made on the ‘road map’ —end terror, end this violence,” Powell told reporters. “The end of the road map is a cliff that both sides will fall off of.”
Israel had suspended what it calls targeted killings and what the Palestinians call assassinations during the cease-fire. But the Israeli security Cabinet decided late Wednesday to renew the practice, in response to the Jerusalem bombing, the deadliest since the launch of a U.S.-backed peace plan three months ago. More than 100 people were wounded in the blast, including about 40 children.
After taking office in April, Abbas had shied away from confrontation with Hamas, Islamic Jihad and armed renegades in his own Fatah movement, saying he feared civil war.
U.S. PRESSURE
Pressure mounted after the Jerusalem bombing, however, with the United States demanding an immediate crackdown. “There’s funding, there’s support, there’s munitions, there’s organization, and all that needs to be taken apart,” said U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.
In a first step, Abbas ordered the arrest of all those directly involved in the bombing, and then asked his Cabinet for proposals on a wider clampdown. The ideas raised in the Cabinet meeting, including arrests, a gag order on Hamas and Islamic Jihad spokesmen, and the freezing of assets of militant groups, were taken to Arafat and top PLO officials for approval late Wednesday.
The meeting, which lasted until early Thursday, was at times stormy. Abbas had told his ministers earlier that he would resign if he did not get Arafat’s full support for taking action against Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but it was not clear whether he made the threat in Arafat’s presence.
In the end, Abbas and Arafat agreed on a joint statement which said the Palestinian Authority would enforce the rule of law, take control of illegal weapons and end “military displays” by the militants, a reference to marches led by gunmen.
The Palestinian leadership statement did not refer to arrests, which would appear to be a cornerstone of any crackdown, but Palestinian officials had promised there would be detentions.
“It’s a campaign that even in the worst nightmares Hamas and Islamic Jihad never imagined,” said Elias Zananiri, a spokesman for Palestinian security chief Mohammed Dahlan, speaking before the missile strike. “There’s a list of people to be arrested.”
After Thursday’s attack, a Hamas leader in Beirut told Reuters that the group was hopeful that the Palestianian authorities would rethink the crackdown.
“We hope that the Palestinian Authority...learns the lesson that the Zionist enemy wants to use it to realise its aims in oppressing the Palestinian people,” Osama Hamdan told Reuters. “We consider that it is up to the Authority government to stop its threats to the resistance and return to the Palestinian people in the framework of a national dialogue based on protecting them.”
WEST BANK RAIDS
The Israelis moved back into Palestinian areas after the bus bombing. Since the spring of 2002, when Israel reoccupied most of the West Bank, troops have been moving in and out of Palestinian towns repeatedly to arrested wanted men.
The biggest operation was in the old city of Nablus, a militant stronghold where troops were looking for Hamas militants and Fatah renegades responsible for two bombings that killed two Israelis earlier this month.
Troops sealed off the old city with armored vehicles and barbed wire and ordered residents out of homes to search buildings. They arrested 14 Palestinians, including a Hamas member caught with a large quantity of explosives, the army and witnesses said.
In the town of Tulkarem, Israeli undercover troops chasing two Fatah gunmen raided a pool hall, but the fugitives escaped. The soldiers opened fire during the chase, killing a 16-year-old bystander and wounding four, all under the age of 20, Palestinian security officials said. The Israeli military said there was a gunbattle. |
