Israel delivered another blow to the faltering road map to peace yesterday with the assassination of a Hamas leader, drawing threats of retaliation from the Islamic organisation and implicit criticism from the US secretary of state, Colin Powell.
Mainstream Palestinian leaders accused Israel of further jeopardising the US-led peace process after an undercover army unit shot Abdullah Qawasmeh dead in Hebron.
The Israeli government alleged that Qawasmeh was responsible for organising suicide bombings that claimed more than 50 lives, including the attack on a Jerusalem bus this month in retaliation for another assassination attempt against a Hamas leader.
Ariel Sharon praised the latest killing as ”a vital action designed to provide security for Israel’s citizens”.
But at a meeting in Jordan with the other powers responsible for the road map — the UN, EU and Russia — Powell was more sceptical even though he called Hamas an ”enemy of peace” during a visit to Israel last week. Yesterday, he warned that such killings could further impede the peace process. ”I regret that we continue to find ourselves trapped in this action and counter-action, provocation and reaction to provocation. I regret we had an incident that could be an impediment to progress,” he said. ”It is a matter of concern. It is still important to remain committed to moving forward.”
A Palestinian cabinet minister, Yasser Abd Rabbo, said the attack in Hebron was evidence that Israel continued to assassinate its opponents despite promising the Americans that it would only do so to prevent imminent terror attacks. ”These operations are meant to obstruct any success of the dialogue to reach a truce,” he said.
Hamas threatened to retaliate as it did with the bus bomb after the botched Israeli attempt to assassinate the organisation’s political leader, Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi.
Palestinian witnesses said Qawasmeh was unarmed and standing outside a mosque when he was shot. Israeli officials said he pulled a gun.
Later, tensions were further inflamed when an Israeli tank killed three Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian officials said.
The violence came as the Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, continued his attempts to persuade Hamas to agree to a ceasefire in its war against Israel.
Separately, American efforts focused on hammering out the terms for an Israeli military withdrawal from all of Gaza except the Jewish settlements. The Palestinians want the lifting of road blocks and checkpoints as well as an end to assassinations, which claim many civilian lives.
Israel has insisted on retaining control of the main road running the length of Gaza although diplomatic sources say it may offer to share responsibility with the Palestinians.
At his weekly cabinet meeting, Sharon repeated his willingness to hand over responsibility for security in Gaza to the Palestinians but he again he demanded that Abbas do what the Israeli army has failed to do and ”uproot terror”. He added that until Hamas and other groups were crushed Israel reserved the right to send in its forces.
Sharon underscored doubts that he is not serious about removing Jewish ‘outposts’ and other settlements in the occupied territories by telling settlers to carry on building yesterday. His comments came after one of his ministers proposed resolving the settler issue by moving them from the West Bank to less populated parts of Israel such as the Negev desert.
The prime minister rejected the idea saying that the settlements should go on expanding but that settlers ”should not celebrate the construction, should just build”.
At the Middle East summit with Bush in Aqaba this month, Sharon committed himself to dismantling nearly 100 Jewish ”outposts” in the West Bank. But only a dozen have come down, and about 10 more have been constructed.
Only one of those dismantled was inhabited and it was taken down the day before a visit to Israel by Powell, leading to speculation in the Israeli press that it was done for show.
Ephraim Halevy, the director of Israel’s national security council and former head of the Mossad spy agency, resigned yesterday after losing a battle for influence over Sharon’s approach to the road map.
Several months ago, Halevy warned the prime minister that George Bush was serious about the road map and that Tony Blair was exerting considerable influence over the US president on the issue. Halevy argued that Israel should draw up its own plan and announce that it would lay out the path and conditions to peace.
Sharon’s chief aide, Dov Weissglass, disagreed and persuaded him that the hawks in the White House would ensure that the road map was never taken seriously and that Bush was duping Blair.
”Either they’ve been playing us the entire time or they’re playing the British,” Weissglass said in March.
Halevy was proved right but despite this and having been a special envoy in talks with Palestinian leaders, he was increasingly sidelined and rarely consulted by the prime minister. – Guardian Unlimited Â