Hamas leader Abdul Aziz al-Rantissi threatened on Tuesday ”not to leave one Jew in Palestine” in remarks to Al-Jazeera television as he recovered from an Israeli bid to kill him.
Rantissi was wounded on Tuesday in an Israeli helicopter raid on his jeep in Gaza City. The attack killed a woman and a five-year-old girl, Palestinian medical sources said.
”By God we will not leave one Jew in Palestine. We will fight them with all the strength we have. This is our land, not the Jews’,” Rantissi said after undergoing surgery for his wounds.
He raged against Israeli authorities from his hospital bed, and urged Palestinian militant groups to target Israeli politicians.
”I am asking all Palestinian militant groups to kill Israeli political leaders, because all of them are killers,” he told reporters .
”Not a single Jew in Palestine is safe from now on and we will continue our jihad [holy war] until the end,” said the 55-year-old leader .
Rantissi blamed Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmud Abbas and his dovish statement at a US-convened summit in Aqaba, Jordan last week for the Israeli attack.
”The Palestinian Authority in Aqaba gave the green light to continue assassinations and the killing of our children,” he charged.
”We ask Abu Mazen (Abbas’s nom de guerre) to abandon his Aqaba commitments. Zionist terrorism will not stop through the power of peace,” he added.
Muawia Abu Hassanein, who heads the Shifa hospital, had earlier said Rantissi was killed in the missile attack. He later retracted and said the Hamas leader was only wounded in the leg and was being operated on.
Speaking by telephone, Rantissi said he was injured in the left leg and right arm and also had a superficial chest wound.
Palestinian sources said 27 people were wounded in the raid, including Rantissi, his son, Ahmad, and two bodyguards. One bodyguard was initially reported dead.
Israeli gunships fired a first missile on Rantissi’s jeep shortly before 11am (0800 GMT), said witnesses, who added that all the occupants jumped out of the car before it was completely destroyed by two more missiles.
The attack took place on a busy thoroughfare incidentally named after the armed wing of Hamas — Ezzedine al-Qassam Street.
After the blasts, hundreds of Gazans flocked to the Shifa hospital, which lies just a few blocks away from the site of the missile attack, amid initial reports of Rantissi’s death.
Supporters of militant groups massed around the gates of the hospital staged an impromptu demonstration protesting the call by Abbas to end the armed intifada. Rantissi has repeatedly rejected Abbas’s appeals.
Abbas has demanded immediate action from the United States following the assassination attempt. A statement said: ”The prime minister conveyed an urgent message to the US administration expressing his condemnation of this terrorist attack, and warning of the grave dangers facing the implementation of the roadmap as a result of this Israeli action.”
Haretz.com reports Rantissi as saying that attacks would be confined to ”the occupiers [the Israelis],” indicating that no civil war would break out among Palestinians.
Palestinian Information Minister Nabil Amr warned that the failed assassination bid on al-Rantissi ”seriously threatens” ongoing peace efforts.
”We condemn and deplore this criminal attack, which has already resulted in the deaths of two Palestinian civilians and has wounded several others,” he said.
”Such acts seriously threaten efforts to resume the process, and we believe the intention is precisely to damage these efforts,” he added.
Army Radio reported Hamas’s statement that the attack was an Israeli ”declaration of war,” and that all cease-fire talks with the Palestinian Authority are off.
Senior Hamas leader, Mahmoud al-Zahar, told Al-Jazeera satellite television that ”Israel should expect that this crime…will not pass without severe punishment.”
The attack has dashed rising hopes that peace efforts were back on track after the Israeli army started dismantling settlement outposts in the West Bank overnight. – Sapa-AFP