A series of first attempts by Palestinian militants to avenge the death of Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin failed, but the radical Islamic movement promised on Friday they were only ”the beginning”.
Israeli soldiers shot dead two heavily armed Hamas militants overnight who had infiltrated the southern Gaza Strip settlement block of Gush Katif by sea, both sides reported.
The two gunmen wore diving suits and flippers and used the inner tube of a car tire to transport two Kalashnikov assault rifles, a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, four hand-grenades and ammunition.
After reaching the shore, they opened ”heavy” fire on the car of a settler, but were killed in a shoot-out with Israeli soldiers manning a look-out post nearby.
Initial reports had said three men were involved and killed, but the army found two bodies when it combed the scene of the shoot-out in the morning, along with the weapons.
”This attack is the beginning of the response to the assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin,” a leaflet issued by Hamas’s armed wing, Izz al-Din al-Qassam, said.
A third Palestinian militant was killed later on Friday afternoon while preparing a car bomb, which exploded prematurely in the northern West Bank city of Nablus. He was a member of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a violent arm of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s ruling Fatah party, Palestinian sources reported.
Two Hamas militants armed with guns and disguised in Israeli army uniforms had been killed while trying to attack the southern Gaza Strip settlement of Morag already on Tuesday night, while another attack was foiled that same day when a Palestinian teenager decided at the last minute not to detonate a bomb belt he was wearing at a roadblock near Nablus.
No one claimed responsibility for the near-suicide attack by the boy, but it happened a day after Israeli missiles killed Yassin as he returned from prayers at his local Gaza City mosque early on Monday. Immediately after the death of the 68-year-old spiritual leader, Hamas had promised revenge like ”an angry volcano and a piece of hell that will burn the land under the feet of the Zionists”.
Israel decided to launch the new offensive against Hamas after a joint double suicide bombing by Hamas and the al-Aqsa Brigades in its southern port city of Ashdod.
Security officials were widely quoted as saying the aim was to deal a fatal blow to Hamas ahead of Israel’s planned unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and prevent the fundamentalist group from taking control.
Israel Army Radio reported on Friday that Washington has rejected an Israeli request to back publicly the Jewish state’s wish to annex its three largest West Bank settlement blocks in return for the voluntary evacuation of nearly all Gaza settlements and some other West Bank ones as a first step of Premier Ariel Sharon’s ”disengagement plan”.
Sharon’s bureau chief Dov Weisglass made the request in talks over the past days with United States National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, who was unable to answer the request positively, the radio said.
The US was, however, still considering the issue, it later added.
Sharon reportedly hopes to be rewarded by the US for his unilateral step by getting US support on a number of Israeli interests, including also a declaration that Palestinian refugees will have the right to resettle in a future Palestinian state alone, not in Israel proper.
Palestinians, meanwhile, were disappointed, but Israel pleased, with a US veto that blocked a United Nations Security Council condemnation of Israel’s assassination of Yassin.
”The veto does not serve the peace process, because there is an international condemnation of the killing of Hamas leader Yassin. We were hoping that the US administration would have joined the rest of the world in condemning this position,” Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a top aide to Arafat, said.
Sharon’s spokesperson Ra’anan Gissin welcomed the veto.
”At least there is one country that … does not stand with the countries that appease terrorism,” he said.
The US called the resolution unbalanced because it was ”silent about the terrorist atrocities committed by Hamas”.
Three countries — Germany, Britain and Romania — abstained in Thursday’s vote on the resolution, which was sponsored by Algeria and supported by 11 council members. — Sapa-DPA