internationally condemned assassination of its famous leader Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi, 56, by Israeli forces hours earlier with "100 retaliations". But as tens of thousands of Palestinians flooded the streets of Gaza City to escort Rantisi’s coffin, wrapped in a Green Hamas flag, Israel made clear it would continue "targeted killings" as part of its own "war on terror" and did not rule out to assassinate Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.
Arafat had called Rantisi a "courageous leader" in a statement faxed from his office. "The crimes of the barbaric occupiers will only reinforce our resistance," Arafat was quoted as saying. Israeli cabinet minister Gideon Ezra said Israel was also planning to kill overall Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal "the minute we have the operational opportunity [to] do this", the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reported. This was the second killing of a Hamas leader in less than a month, after Sheikh Ahmed Yassin died in a missile attack on March 22.
The Prime Minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon, reportedly praised the army for Saturday’s helicopter strike on Rantissi and pledged the Jewish state would continue to "fight terror" as well as the battle against Hamas which was blamed for dozens of suicide bombings against Israeli targets since November, 2000. Witnesses said an Israeli Air Force helicopter-gunship was seen firing on Rantisi’s car, just hours after his group claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing that killed an Israeli border guard at the Erez crossing point between Israel and Gaza.
MORE ISRAELI ATTACKS
"This policy of making an effort on the one hand to advance a political process and on the other hand to hit the terror organizations and their leaders will continue," Sharon stressed at the beginning of his weekly cabinet meeting, according to the online edition of Haaretz newspaper.
However Hamas warned that its "revenge will come a hundredfold for the blood of Rantisi and Yassin," in a faxed statement signed by the organization’s military wing, known as Izadin al-Qassam, the Bloomberg news agency said. "We will ignite a volcano of revenge.”
The statement underscored concern expressed by several world leaders, including United Nations Secretary Gerenal Kofi Annan, who warned of a further escalation of violence. "The only way to halt an escalation in the violence is for Israelis and Palestinians to work towards a viable negotiating process aimed at a just, lasting and comprehensive settlement, based on the Quartet’s Road Map," added Annann in a statement released to news organizations. He referred to the road map for Middle East peace drawn by the United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia.
INTERNATIONAL CONDEMNATION
The European Union, Japan, Jordan, Sweden and many other countries condemned the Israeli attack. "Israel has a right to protect its citizens from terrorist attacks, but actions of this type are not only unlawful, they are not conducive to lowering tension," AFP quoted Javier Solana, the EU’s high representative for common foreign and security policy, as saying. Palestinians have accused the United States of having allowed the latest killing by Israel, although Washington has denied it gave the "green light" for the assassination.
Palestinian officials have been outraged by reports that U.S. President George W. Bush Bush suggested that Israel "could not be expected to give up all land captured in the 1967 Middle East war" and rejected any right of return of Palestinian refugees to Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Sharon also received Bush’s backing last week at the White House for a plan to evacuate Jewish settlements from the Gaza Strip and to withdraw all Israeli forces from Gaza and four Jewish settlements in the West Bank by the end of 2005.
Sharon presented his "disengagement plan" to his cabinet on Sunday, April 18, but a vote will be delayed until after a referendum on the pullout is held on May 2 among the 200,000 members of the prime minister’s right-wing Likud party, the Reuters news agency reported. It said that some 7,500 settlers live in the Gaza Strip and an estimated 200,000 settlers and two million Palestinians reside in the West Bank.
