News, March 2004, www.aljazeerah.info
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Israel to Target Arafat
Hisham Abu Taha
Arab News
JERUSALEM, 24 March 2004 — Israel vowed yesterday to kill the entire Hamas leadership. Israeli officials also hinted that Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah may also eventually be assassinated.
Israeli security sources said Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and his security chiefs decided in a five-hour meeting late Monday to try to kill the entire Hamas leadership, without waiting for a response to the assassination of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.
Israel’s police minister, Tzahi Hanegbi, warned that “anyone who is involved in terrorism in Gaza or the West Bank... knows after yesterday’s assassination that no one is immune. Everyone is in our sights.”
Mofaz later said that Hamas leaders would be targeted. “If we continue in a determined way with our strikes against Hamas and other terror groups, with the means I outlined, including action against those leaders, we will bring more security to Israeli citizens,” he said.
Abdel Aziz Al-Rantisi, a political voice in Hamas who was chosen to be the top Hamas leader in Gaza following Yassin’s assassination, warned Israelis “will not know security” and urged the group’s armed wing to strike. He was speaking to an audience of several of the movement’s leaders and thousands of Hamas supporters gathered to extend their condolences for Yassin.
Hamas officials said Rantisi emerged from secret elections as the Gaza chief of Hamas.
Khaled Mashaal, a Hamas operative based in Syria, still heads the group’s political bureau, the main decision-making body.
At a press briefing, Gen. Moshe Yaalon suggested that Arafat and Nasrallah would eventually be assassinated by Israel. “I think that their responses yesterday show that they understand that it is nearing them,” Yaalon said when asked if the two men were in Israel’s crosshairs.
Arafat’s aides say the Palestinian leader is concerned about being targeted. “We take this very seriously,” Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat said of the veiled Israeli threats.
In Gaza City, thousands of mourners paid condolences in a reception area set up in a large soccer stadium. Loudspeakers broadcast calls for jihad. A number of Hamas leaders greeted mourners. Green Hamas flags fluttered throughout the stadium, and posters of Yassin were plastered on the stadium walls. Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei paid his condolences to Hamas at the stadium.
Yassin’s wife, Halima, greeted mourners at their modest Gaza City home. “We’re counting on God and God will give us our revenge... on the Jews, I hope, and on the collaborators, and on the spies,” she said.
Ismail Haniyeh, a top Yassin aide, said Hamas took a blow to morale, but would continue carrying out attacks on Israel.
In the Gaza Strip, Palestinians fired an anti-tank rocket at an Israeli Army position near a Jewish settlement, triggering a gunbattle with Israeli forces.
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python (Alquds, 1/25/03. |
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