The Israeli government has approved the elimination of the entire leadership of Hamas and other militant groups following the assassination of the Islamic resistance movement’s founder and spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.
Among the targets is the uncompromising new Hamas leader named by the organisation on Tuesday, Abdel Aziz al Rantissi, who has opposed tentative political concessions and a ceasefire by the group.
Israel’s internal security minister, Tsahi Hanegbi, said the government had given a green light to the army to kill ”the worst terrorists”.
”Anyone who is involved in the Gaza Strip or the West Bank or anywhere else in leading a terror group knows from yesterday there is no immunity. Everyone is in our sights,” he said.
Israeli security sources say that defence chiefs have decided to kill all Hamas leaders without waiting for the organisation to carry out its threats of bloody retaliation for Sheikh Yassin’s death.
The defence minister, Shaul Mofaz, said the strategy would ultimately curb suicide bombings and other attacks on Israelis.
”If we will continue, in a determined way, with our strikes against Hamas and other terror groups … including action against those leaders, we will bring more security to Israeli citizens,” he said.
The Israeli army chief of staff, Lieutenant General Moshe Yaalon, hinted that the targets could now include Yasser Arafat, even though Ariel Sharon has given a personal assurance to President George Bush that the Palestinian leader will not be harmed. He also suggested Israel could attack the leader of the Lebanese-based group Hizbullah, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah.
”I think that judging by their [Arafat’s and Nasrallah’s] hysterical responses yesterday they understand that it is nearing them. In the long term, I hope that this will be a sign to all those who choose to hurt us that this will be their end,” said General Yaalon.
A government spokesperson later sought to clarify this, saying that while Sheikh Nasrallah was a target because he was committed to the destruction of Israel, this did not apply to Arafat.
But another government source said the promise given by Sharon not to harm Arafat applied only to the run-up to the war in Iraq last year. The government has so far considered exiling, but not killing, the Palestinian leader.
Israeli firepower was resounding at both ends of the country last night. Tanks rolled into a Gaza refugee camp under covering gunfire to clear an area that Israel suspects militants use to fire on Israeli settlements. In the north, meanwhile, helicopters attacked and killed two Palestinian militants in south Lebanon who Israel said were preparing to fire rockets over the border.
Tensions were heightened earlier in Gaza after Palestinians fired an anti-tank rocket at an Israeli army position near a Jewish settlement, prompting a gun battle.
Also in Gaza, Hamas named Dr Rantissi as its temporary leader after a ballot among senior figures in the organisation. The announcement, at a memorial rally for Sheikh Yassin in a Gaza City stadium, was greeted enthusiastically by the crowd.
At the stadium, Rantissi pledged to escalate attacks on Israel. ”We will be unified in the trenches of resistance. We will not surrender, we will never surrender to Israeli terror,” he said.
Among those attending the ceremony was the Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qureia, who called the assassination of Sheikh Yassin an ”ugly crime committed by the government of murderers”.
Many businesses were shut in Gaza and the West Bank as a mark of respect for the quadriplegic Hamas founder, who was killed by a helicopter missile strike as his bodyguards pushed him in a wheelchair after prayers at a mosque.
Hanegbi made it clear that Rantissi was an early focus for the Israeli military after saying the men targeted for death include ”those who appear on television”, a veiled reference to the new Hamas leader and his deputy, Mahmoud Zahar.
General Yaalon said that part of the motive for targeting Rantissi and his associates is to prevent Hamas seizing political control in Gaza.
”Even if in the short term the assassination increases the motivation to carry out terror attacks, in the long run, the assassination is likely to calm the situation in the Gaza Strip and encourage moderate forces to prevent the founding of ‘Hamas-land’ in the [Gaza] strip,” he said.
Israel remained on high alert on Tuesday. Its parliament announced that personal security for its members is to be beefed up, and its foreign ministry ordered diplomats abroad to increase security.
Crowds in central Jerusalem were thinner than usual, and there were fewer people travelling by bus.
The US has warned its citizens in the Middle East that they could become targets after Rantissi called on Muslims worldwide to ”shake the ground of these Zionists and Americans who stand behind them”.
On Tuesday night, in his first response to the assassination, President Bush said that Israel had the right to defend itself against Hamas but urged the Israeli government to keep ”the consequences in mind”. He said that he hoped to send a delegation to Israel next week to try to revive a stalled US-backed peace plan.
Meanwhile, the US blocked a draft security council condemnation of the killing of Sheikh Yassin because it made no mention of Hamas terrorism. – Guardian Unlimited Â