Hamas responded to Israel’s assassination of its spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin on Monday by calling for Muslims across the globe to attack Israelis and Americans who support Israel.
Ariel Sharon personally approved the helicopter missile attack that killed the quadriplegic Hamas founder as he was pushed in his wheelchair outside his local mosque.
The Israeli prime minister described it as part of the war on terror and called Sheikh Yassin the ”first and foremost leader of the Palestinian terrorist murderers” who was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Israelis. Seven other people died in the attack and more than a dozen were wounded, including two of Sheikh Yassin’s sons.
The United States, which said it had no prior knowledge of the attack, refused to condemn the killing but on Monday night moved to reassure the Arab world and Europe that it had limits to its tolerance for Israel, saying it was ”deeply troubled” by the attack.
The killing was widely condemned elsewhere. Britain and the United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan called it unlawful, the EU said it would end the only prospect for peace in the region and Egypt cancelled a parliamentary visit to Israel to mark the 25th anniversary of the peace treaty between the two countries.
The Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, declared three days of mourning and said the Israelis had ”crossed all red lines”.
Angry Gaza residents poured on to the streets to burn tyres and later about 200 000 followed the coffin carrying Sheikh Yassin’s badly mutilated body. At the funeral, the man widely expected to assume control of Hamas, Abed al Aziz Rantisi, described the assassination as an attack on Islam and called for a broadening of the conflict.
”They kill our leaders, it is a war against Islam. There is war in Iraq and Palestine. I say to the Muslim nation they have to wake up from their sleep and they have to shake the ground of these Zionists and Americans who stand behind them,” he said. ”Yassin is a man in a nation, and a nation in a man. And the retaliation of this nation will be of the size of this man.”
The al-Aqsa martyrs brigades, a faction of Arafat’s Fatah movement, called for ”war, war, war on the sons of Zion. An eye for an eye. There will be a response within hours, God willing”.
Shortly after the killing, a Palestinian man wounded three people in an axe attack near a Tel Aviv army base and an Arab stabbed three passengers on a bus in Jaffa. The Israeli army closed off all access to Israel by Palestinians and armoured vehicles later rolled into the northern Gaza Strip to stop attacks by angry militants who had fired four homemade rockets, at least one landing in southern Israel.
At the site of Sheikh Yassin’s death, hundreds of people rushed to rub their hands in his blood in a traditional ritual to pledge revenge. All that remained of his wheelchair was a twisted wheel and the charred seat. At the funeral, mourners scrambled to touch the Hamas flag covering the coffin of the man widely judged to be second only to Arafat in popularity among Palestinians.
Sharon justified the killing by calling Sheikh Yassin the ”mastermind of Palestinian terror” and a ”mass murderer who is among Israel’s greatest enemies”, while the Israeli foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, called him ”the godfather of the suicide bombers”.
But the Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qureia, said the killing would cause further violence. ”It opens the door wide to chaos. Yassin was known for his moderation and he was controlling Hamas. Therefore this is a dangerous, cowardly act,” he said.
Jack Straw, the British Foreign Secretary, said that Israel had a right to defend itself but called the assassination ”unacceptable”, ”unjustified” and ”very unlikely to achieve its objectives”.
Critics of Sharon accused him of seeking to perpetuate and even escalate the conflict to justify his plan to declare the borders of a Palestinian state on Israel’s terms.
Israeli attacks on Gaza have intensified since Sharon announced in January his intention to pull Jewish settlers out of the territory. The government appears to want to try to break Hamas and Islamic Jihad before the withdrawal.
Sheikh Yassin was a relatively easy target. He refused to go into hiding or vary his routine of praying at his local mosque each morning, even after the Israelis declared him a marked man.
The Hamas leader frequently told reporters that he would welcome ”martyrdom”. – Guardian Unlimited Â