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Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, march 22 2004 |
27 mar 2004
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Hamas no longer has the capabilities to pose a major threat to Israeli PM Ariel Sharons disengagement plan after Sheikh Ahmed Yassin's assassination, military and intelligence officials told the PM.
Hamas' failure to carry out an attack inside Israel almost one week after the spiritual leader's death is evidence organization no longer has the capacity to carry out its threat of bloody vengeance, said Israeli military officials. Israeli authorities say they are still expecting an attack, but due to intensified Israeli security, militants are having trouble launching it. Sharon's motives behind the assassination have been questioned by |
many who believe Yassin could have been killed any time during the last three years. Yassin death may have more to do with eradicating Hamas' political capabilities after disengagement, rather than removing a terrorist. Lieutenant General Moshe Ya'alon, said destroying Hamas leadership was designed to prevent the organization seizing power in Gaza after disengagement.
Israeli government officials have also said an important part of the disengagement plan was to prevent militant groups taking control in the West Bank and Gaza Strip after Israel withdraws. One official said the destruction of Hamas and groups like it was designed to strengthen the Palestinian Authority and “deal with the immediate threat of terrorism", the Guardian reported.
Palestinians believe the assassination has more to do with Israel exerting force before withdrawing from Gaza, so they will not seem weak in their retreat. Senior Hamas leaders have said Israels withdrawal is a retreat, rather than disengagement. Some Israeli officials, however, believe Yassin's assassination will only serve to increase recruitment of foot-soldiers and bombers for Hamas.
On Thursday, a 14 year-old boy was arrested at Harawa checkpoint near Nablus wearing an eight kilogram bomb-belt. It was reported the young boy had been recruited by militants and paid 100NIS to blow himself up next to Israeli soldiers. Major Israel cities have been on high-terror alert since Monday and it is expected to last for the next 40 days, until after Independence Day.
Palestinians observed three days of mourning after the assassination, while more than 70 Palestinian politicians and intellectuals called upon fellow nationals to avoid violent retaliation, as it would be playing into the hands of Sharon. In advertisement in the Palestinian Authority's newspaper al-Ayyam on Thursday, officials said the struggle against occupation should “rise again in a peaceful, wise large-scale uprising".
“Let's not fall into Sharon's trap. Let's show his moral and political bankruptcy by struggling for our moral right to end the occupation with peaceful means," the advertisement said. The assassination of Yassin brought condemnation from world leaders, while protests were held in many Muslim states around the globe.
The Yassin Assassination
by GARY LEUPP
Everyone is predicting a spate of horrific suicide bombings in Israel as Hamas and other Palestinian groups respond to the "targeted assassination" of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin (and killing of seven other people) by an Apache helicopter air strike a few days ago. According to MSNBC, Israel’s army chief has stated that Yassir Arafat and the Lebanese Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah will also be assassinated. I take it for granted that the assassins, proud of their work, convinced of its necessity and goodness, know exactly what they’re doing. They have factored in ghastly reprisals, and have plans about how to follow up.
Some observations and predictions:
1. The foreign policy of the Bush administration has since 9-11 been steered by officials who have a well thought out and clearly articulated plan to affect regime change throughout the Middle East. Such change in Iraq, Syria, Iran, and a number of other Muslim countries is central to the neocons’ world-transforming project. While Israel’s security is not the key issue in Bush Middle East policy, it is a very important secondary one, and U.S. and Israeli policies are closely coordinated.
2. Last October 5, Israel responded to an Islamic Jihad suicide bombing in Haifa by staging an air strike on Syria, the first time it had bombed Syria in 30 years. Ariel Sharon argued that Damascus "sponsors" Islamic Jihad and "Palestinian terrorism" in general and so Israel was acting in self-defense.
3. While condemned by European leaders, including the British foreign minister, and almost everybody else, the attack was justified by President Bush as necessary to "defend the homeland." (Note: not "your homeland" but "the homeland." Bush seems not to distinguish.) It was praised by leading neocon Richard Perle (then still on the Defense Policy Board), who declared, "I am happy to see the message was delivered to Syria by the Israeli air force, and I hope it is the first of many such messages." Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz stated, "There will have to be change in Syria, plainly."
(This makes me recall the fifth chapter of the Book of Daniel—an interesting novelette written around 160 BCE, and incorporated into the Old Testament. The neocons are, in effect, saying: "The handwriting is on the wall; Bashir Assad’s days are numbered; his kingdom will be divided—not between the Medes and the Persians, but— between the Americans and the Israelis." http://www.inisrael.com/golan/ )
4. Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, administration point man on Syria, argued last fall in Congress for the "Syria Accountability Act," which was passed, 398-5, by the House of Representatives Oct. 16. (99% approval. Isn’t it great to live in a democracy where well-informed elected officials can express varied views about the Middle East?) Then it sailed through the Senate.
Officially vilifying Syria (which has actually been an ally against al-Qaeda), it accuses Damascus of sponsoring terrorism, amassing weapons of mass destruction, and occupying Lebanon, and applies economic sanctions against the Arab nation. Bolton accuses Syria of allowing "terrorists" to cross its border to abet the resistance in Iraq, receiving some of those elusive WMD from Iraq, and providing banking services for the Iraqi resistance. So there is a long list of charges against Syria, as there was against Iraq, and as there is against Iran—enough to persuade the sufficiently impressionable that Syria should be attacked and occupied.
5. The assassination of the wheelchair-bound paraplegic 75 year old Yassin was condemned by Kofi Annan, and by European leaders, including British foreign minister Jack Straw, but Condoleeza Rice, speaking for the Bush administration, refused to criticize it, merely appealing for everybody in the region to keep calm. While the Bush administration denies any foreknowledge of the attack, it will of course stand by Mr. Sharon, whom Bush with his characteristic distance from the real world has dubbed "a man of peace."
6. The neocons have suffered a series of setbacks, including the highly embarrassing revelations of Bush’s former top anti-terrorism advisor Richard Clarke, who charges that Bush demanded intelligence forces concoct links between 9-11 and Iraq to justify an invasion. Anyone paying attention now knows that the Iraq stage of the Terror War was based on lies. The bleeding sore of the occupation saps Bush’s political support, and he and his world-transforming ideologues may be out of jobs come November. That prospect doesn’t make the neocons more humble, but rather more desperate to achieve such pieces of their ambitious program as they might in the next seven months.
7. This month has seen a "human rights" demonstration in Damascus and a couple days of Arab-Kurdish ethnic rioting following a soccer game. These are unusual events in tightly-controlled Syria. There may be an outside hand in them, endeavoring to destabilize the Syrian regime preparatory to some major, externally organized action.
8. A major Hamas suicide bombing would provide a fine pretext for an attack on Syria, perfectly legitimate to anyone predisposed to think Hamas=international terrorism=Syria.
9. At least one Hamas leaflet has suggested that the U.S. bears partial responsibility for Yassin’s assassination: "The Zionists didn’t carry out their operation without getting the consent of the terrorist American administration and it must take responsibility for this crime."
Let’s think about this statement. If the U.S. government can say "you’re for us or against us," and make no distinction between "terrorist organizations" and those who "sponsor" them, surely your good, decent, normal Palestinian on the street can draw a connection between an assassination conducted on the explicit orders of Ariel Sharon (whose government is, as the number one recipient of U.S. foreign aid, subsidized by the U.S. to a mind-boggling $ 3 billion—some say $ 6 billion—per year and enjoys about the most intimate relationship with Washington that any foreign government has ever had) and the American administration. Condoleeza Rice has said the U.S. had no prior knowledge of the assassination, but then she also says honest Richard Clarke’s recent charges about Bush’s handling of the al-Qaeda issue are "ridiculous." The sad fact is that Condi is ridiculous, and her job absolutely requires that she deny U.S. links to assassinations if such occur.
Is the Hamas statement implausible? It seems in fact unlikely that Sharon would undertake his extremely newsworthy action without consulting with the government which subsidizes his own. So Hamas could say: "We make no distinction between those defying international law and assassinating our leaders, and those who sponsor them." Still, it is unlikely that they would undertake an attack on Americans on U.S. soil, however much either al-Qaeda or the neocons might want that (and even be inclined to stage it) in order to exacerbate the confrontation between Islam and the west that they both relish, for their different reasons.
In any case, the statement about "responsibility for this crime" cited above was immediately trumpeted in the U.S. media as a Hamas threat to attack the U.S., something it has never done, would be stupid to do, and probably has no intention of doing. Hamas is not al-Qaeda, however much the Bushites want to conflate all opponents of the U.S. and Israel into a single, simple terroristic Evil. Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge immediately indicated that Washington takes "quite seriously" a threat never explicitly made. But Hamas, as it mourns the loss of its founder, and speculates about what forces produced his murder, becomes demonized, al-Qaeda-ized, another object of American fear.
Start worrying now, everybody, that terrorist Hamas, angry about the death of their terrorist founder at the hands of our Israeli friends—a death we support—is going to attack us, because they blame us for it! That’s the message.
Hamas having been hit by a strike condemned by the entire world (except the U.S. and Israel) and having, in perfectly rational response, expressed outrage, now in its injured state becomes more targeted by the U.S. than ever. Henceforth whatever Sharon does against Hamas, he will be able to depict as an effort to defend not merely his country but the American Homeland threatened by these angry anti-American Palestinians. And whatever measures the Bushites take against "Palestinian terrorism" will be undertaken as "Homeland Defense" measures as well, the Israeli and American homeland boundaries having been thoroughly blurred long since.
10. Let us say Perle’s dream comes true and the Israeli air force does attack pro-Hamas Syria. Let’s say it does so big-time, Sharon-style, and does major damage. Enough to cause enough disorder for the U.S. to argue that a deteriorating situation requires international intervention. The Iraq attack required months of preparation, but intervention in Syria will happen very quickly, coming like a thief in the night as it did in Haiti. Perle has suggested that there are troops to spare in Iraq that can occupy "weak" Syria in short order. Even if Israeli action provides the context, Israeli forces won’t be needed, and U.S. action will be lent some thin international legitimacy if a few hundred "coalition" troops participate. Thus a second Arab nation will become Americanizedly "free," while Palestinians infuriated by these events will commit acts that will justify the "ethnic cleansing" of the West Bank.
I truly hope my imagination has gotten the better of me, that I am a false prophet, and that what I describe will not come to pass.
Hands off Syria!
GARY LEUPP is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa, Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa, Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900.
He can be reached at: [email protected]
Israeli government officials have also said an important part of the disengagement plan was to prevent militant groups taking control in the West Bank and Gaza Strip after Israel withdraws. One official said the destruction of Hamas and groups like it was designed to strengthen the Palestinian Authority and “deal with the immediate threat of terrorism", the Guardian reported.
Palestinians believe the assassination has more to do with Israel exerting force before withdrawing from Gaza, so they will not seem weak in their retreat. Senior Hamas leaders have said Israels withdrawal is a retreat, rather than disengagement. Some Israeli officials, however, believe Yassin's assassination will only serve to increase recruitment of foot-soldiers and bombers for Hamas.
On Thursday, a 14 year-old boy was arrested at Harawa checkpoint near Nablus wearing an eight kilogram bomb-belt. It was reported the young boy had been recruited by militants and paid 100NIS to blow himself up next to Israeli soldiers. Major Israel cities have been on high-terror alert since Monday and it is expected to last for the next 40 days, until after Independence Day.
Palestinians observed three days of mourning after the assassination, while more than 70 Palestinian politicians and intellectuals called upon fellow nationals to avoid violent retaliation, as it would be playing into the hands of Sharon. In advertisement in the Palestinian Authority's newspaper al-Ayyam on Thursday, officials said the struggle against occupation should “rise again in a peaceful, wise large-scale uprising".
“Let's not fall into Sharon's trap. Let's show his moral and political bankruptcy by struggling for our moral right to end the occupation with peaceful means," the advertisement said. The assassination of Yassin brought condemnation from world leaders, while protests were held in many Muslim states around the globe.
The Yassin Assassination
by GARY LEUPP
Everyone is predicting a spate of horrific suicide bombings in Israel as Hamas and other Palestinian groups respond to the "targeted assassination" of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin (and killing of seven other people) by an Apache helicopter air strike a few days ago. According to MSNBC, Israel’s army chief has stated that Yassir Arafat and the Lebanese Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah will also be assassinated. I take it for granted that the assassins, proud of their work, convinced of its necessity and goodness, know exactly what they’re doing. They have factored in ghastly reprisals, and have plans about how to follow up.
Some observations and predictions:
1. The foreign policy of the Bush administration has since 9-11 been steered by officials who have a well thought out and clearly articulated plan to affect regime change throughout the Middle East. Such change in Iraq, Syria, Iran, and a number of other Muslim countries is central to the neocons’ world-transforming project. While Israel’s security is not the key issue in Bush Middle East policy, it is a very important secondary one, and U.S. and Israeli policies are closely coordinated.
2. Last October 5, Israel responded to an Islamic Jihad suicide bombing in Haifa by staging an air strike on Syria, the first time it had bombed Syria in 30 years. Ariel Sharon argued that Damascus "sponsors" Islamic Jihad and "Palestinian terrorism" in general and so Israel was acting in self-defense.
3. While condemned by European leaders, including the British foreign minister, and almost everybody else, the attack was justified by President Bush as necessary to "defend the homeland." (Note: not "your homeland" but "the homeland." Bush seems not to distinguish.) It was praised by leading neocon Richard Perle (then still on the Defense Policy Board), who declared, "I am happy to see the message was delivered to Syria by the Israeli air force, and I hope it is the first of many such messages." Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz stated, "There will have to be change in Syria, plainly."
(This makes me recall the fifth chapter of the Book of Daniel—an interesting novelette written around 160 BCE, and incorporated into the Old Testament. The neocons are, in effect, saying: "The handwriting is on the wall; Bashir Assad’s days are numbered; his kingdom will be divided—not between the Medes and the Persians, but— between the Americans and the Israelis." http://www.inisrael.com/golan/ )
4. Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, administration point man on Syria, argued last fall in Congress for the "Syria Accountability Act," which was passed, 398-5, by the House of Representatives Oct. 16. (99% approval. Isn’t it great to live in a democracy where well-informed elected officials can express varied views about the Middle East?) Then it sailed through the Senate.
Officially vilifying Syria (which has actually been an ally against al-Qaeda), it accuses Damascus of sponsoring terrorism, amassing weapons of mass destruction, and occupying Lebanon, and applies economic sanctions against the Arab nation. Bolton accuses Syria of allowing "terrorists" to cross its border to abet the resistance in Iraq, receiving some of those elusive WMD from Iraq, and providing banking services for the Iraqi resistance. So there is a long list of charges against Syria, as there was against Iraq, and as there is against Iran—enough to persuade the sufficiently impressionable that Syria should be attacked and occupied.
5. The assassination of the wheelchair-bound paraplegic 75 year old Yassin was condemned by Kofi Annan, and by European leaders, including British foreign minister Jack Straw, but Condoleeza Rice, speaking for the Bush administration, refused to criticize it, merely appealing for everybody in the region to keep calm. While the Bush administration denies any foreknowledge of the attack, it will of course stand by Mr. Sharon, whom Bush with his characteristic distance from the real world has dubbed "a man of peace."
6. The neocons have suffered a series of setbacks, including the highly embarrassing revelations of Bush’s former top anti-terrorism advisor Richard Clarke, who charges that Bush demanded intelligence forces concoct links between 9-11 and Iraq to justify an invasion. Anyone paying attention now knows that the Iraq stage of the Terror War was based on lies. The bleeding sore of the occupation saps Bush’s political support, and he and his world-transforming ideologues may be out of jobs come November. That prospect doesn’t make the neocons more humble, but rather more desperate to achieve such pieces of their ambitious program as they might in the next seven months.
7. This month has seen a "human rights" demonstration in Damascus and a couple days of Arab-Kurdish ethnic rioting following a soccer game. These are unusual events in tightly-controlled Syria. There may be an outside hand in them, endeavoring to destabilize the Syrian regime preparatory to some major, externally organized action.
8. A major Hamas suicide bombing would provide a fine pretext for an attack on Syria, perfectly legitimate to anyone predisposed to think Hamas=international terrorism=Syria.
9. At least one Hamas leaflet has suggested that the U.S. bears partial responsibility for Yassin’s assassination: "The Zionists didn’t carry out their operation without getting the consent of the terrorist American administration and it must take responsibility for this crime."
Let’s think about this statement. If the U.S. government can say "you’re for us or against us," and make no distinction between "terrorist organizations" and those who "sponsor" them, surely your good, decent, normal Palestinian on the street can draw a connection between an assassination conducted on the explicit orders of Ariel Sharon (whose government is, as the number one recipient of U.S. foreign aid, subsidized by the U.S. to a mind-boggling $ 3 billion—some say $ 6 billion—per year and enjoys about the most intimate relationship with Washington that any foreign government has ever had) and the American administration. Condoleeza Rice has said the U.S. had no prior knowledge of the assassination, but then she also says honest Richard Clarke’s recent charges about Bush’s handling of the al-Qaeda issue are "ridiculous." The sad fact is that Condi is ridiculous, and her job absolutely requires that she deny U.S. links to assassinations if such occur.
Is the Hamas statement implausible? It seems in fact unlikely that Sharon would undertake his extremely newsworthy action without consulting with the government which subsidizes his own. So Hamas could say: "We make no distinction between those defying international law and assassinating our leaders, and those who sponsor them." Still, it is unlikely that they would undertake an attack on Americans on U.S. soil, however much either al-Qaeda or the neocons might want that (and even be inclined to stage it) in order to exacerbate the confrontation between Islam and the west that they both relish, for their different reasons.
In any case, the statement about "responsibility for this crime" cited above was immediately trumpeted in the U.S. media as a Hamas threat to attack the U.S., something it has never done, would be stupid to do, and probably has no intention of doing. Hamas is not al-Qaeda, however much the Bushites want to conflate all opponents of the U.S. and Israel into a single, simple terroristic Evil. Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge immediately indicated that Washington takes "quite seriously" a threat never explicitly made. But Hamas, as it mourns the loss of its founder, and speculates about what forces produced his murder, becomes demonized, al-Qaeda-ized, another object of American fear.
Start worrying now, everybody, that terrorist Hamas, angry about the death of their terrorist founder at the hands of our Israeli friends—a death we support—is going to attack us, because they blame us for it! That’s the message.
Hamas having been hit by a strike condemned by the entire world (except the U.S. and Israel) and having, in perfectly rational response, expressed outrage, now in its injured state becomes more targeted by the U.S. than ever. Henceforth whatever Sharon does against Hamas, he will be able to depict as an effort to defend not merely his country but the American Homeland threatened by these angry anti-American Palestinians. And whatever measures the Bushites take against "Palestinian terrorism" will be undertaken as "Homeland Defense" measures as well, the Israeli and American homeland boundaries having been thoroughly blurred long since.
10. Let us say Perle’s dream comes true and the Israeli air force does attack pro-Hamas Syria. Let’s say it does so big-time, Sharon-style, and does major damage. Enough to cause enough disorder for the U.S. to argue that a deteriorating situation requires international intervention. The Iraq attack required months of preparation, but intervention in Syria will happen very quickly, coming like a thief in the night as it did in Haiti. Perle has suggested that there are troops to spare in Iraq that can occupy "weak" Syria in short order. Even if Israeli action provides the context, Israeli forces won’t be needed, and U.S. action will be lent some thin international legitimacy if a few hundred "coalition" troops participate. Thus a second Arab nation will become Americanizedly "free," while Palestinians infuriated by these events will commit acts that will justify the "ethnic cleansing" of the West Bank.
I truly hope my imagination has gotten the better of me, that I am a false prophet, and that what I describe will not come to pass.
Hands off Syria!
GARY LEUPP is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa, Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa, Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900.
He can be reached at: [email protected]
25 mar 2004
A Palestinian Call for a Peaceful Intifada
Palestinian Officials and intellectuals call upon a non-violent reaction to Mondays assassination of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin. A half page ad was published in the daily newspaper, Al-Ayyam Thursday singed by seventy Palestinian Intellectuals and officials from different PLO factions calling for a nonviolent Intifada against the Israeli occupation.
The signatories condemned the assassination of the leader and founder of Hamas, sheikh Ahmad Yassin on Monday outside of a Gaza mosque, and called for a nonviolent response to this killing so as not to give the chance for Sharon to kill more Palestinians. "as we are in very deep sorrow and pain by the catastrophe [Yassin's death] we call upon our people in all Palestine to start an initiative as a preemptive measure and promote and lead a wide nonviolent Intifada with clear goals¦" The ad said.
The ad said clearly that the Palestinian People under occupation has the full right to all kinds of resistance to the occupation guaranteed by all International conventions and charters, however, called for conducting civil resistance instead of the military. The intellectuals said in their ad, such revenge attacks would lead to a strong Israeli attack and further hurt the Palestinian cause, and by doing so Sharon will fulfill his plan, and confirmed the end of the Israeli Occupation in Palestine.
Among the signatories, Dr, Hanan Ashrawi, a former member of the Palestinian negotiating team and Ahmad Jbarah, (Abu Sukker) who spent 25 years in Israeli jails, released in May 2003 and Dr. Jad Isaac, a Palestinian from Beit Sahour, near Bethlehem, a town known of its nonviolent resistance nature. 15 years ago this town organized a civil disobedience to protest against the Occupation.
It copied the American model by refusing to pay taxes to the Israeli occupation under the slogan of "No Taxation without Representation" in the first Intifada, 1987 - 1993.
Beit Sahour was severely attacked for this protest. Palestinian villages and tonws are facing the construction of the wall in the West Bank with their bare hands. They are being shot at beaten and arrested on daily basis along the contruction line of the wall. International Peace Activists from the Inernational Solidarity Movement are sometimes present, and also get arrested, beaten up and deported for their nonviolent protest.
Palestinian Officials and intellectuals call upon a non-violent reaction to Mondays assassination of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin. A half page ad was published in the daily newspaper, Al-Ayyam Thursday singed by seventy Palestinian Intellectuals and officials from different PLO factions calling for a nonviolent Intifada against the Israeli occupation.
The signatories condemned the assassination of the leader and founder of Hamas, sheikh Ahmad Yassin on Monday outside of a Gaza mosque, and called for a nonviolent response to this killing so as not to give the chance for Sharon to kill more Palestinians. "as we are in very deep sorrow and pain by the catastrophe [Yassin's death] we call upon our people in all Palestine to start an initiative as a preemptive measure and promote and lead a wide nonviolent Intifada with clear goals¦" The ad said.
The ad said clearly that the Palestinian People under occupation has the full right to all kinds of resistance to the occupation guaranteed by all International conventions and charters, however, called for conducting civil resistance instead of the military. The intellectuals said in their ad, such revenge attacks would lead to a strong Israeli attack and further hurt the Palestinian cause, and by doing so Sharon will fulfill his plan, and confirmed the end of the Israeli Occupation in Palestine.
Among the signatories, Dr, Hanan Ashrawi, a former member of the Palestinian negotiating team and Ahmad Jbarah, (Abu Sukker) who spent 25 years in Israeli jails, released in May 2003 and Dr. Jad Isaac, a Palestinian from Beit Sahour, near Bethlehem, a town known of its nonviolent resistance nature. 15 years ago this town organized a civil disobedience to protest against the Occupation.
It copied the American model by refusing to pay taxes to the Israeli occupation under the slogan of "No Taxation without Representation" in the first Intifada, 1987 - 1993.
Beit Sahour was severely attacked for this protest. Palestinian villages and tonws are facing the construction of the wall in the West Bank with their bare hands. They are being shot at beaten and arrested on daily basis along the contruction line of the wall. International Peace Activists from the Inernational Solidarity Movement are sometimes present, and also get arrested, beaten up and deported for their nonviolent protest.
24 mar 2004
Dr. Abdel Aziz Rantisi, 57, became the new "general commander" of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, replacing Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who was assassinated by Israel on Monday.
Ismael Hanyeh, who served as the Bureau Chief for Sheikh Yassin, said, with Rantisi standing to his right "if Ahmed Yassin were alive he would choose Rantisi as his heir."
Later, Rantisi issued a statement saying "during Yassin's life I was elected as his deputy and in accordance with the regulations of the Hamas movement, the deputy is the heir to the leader in case of his death." The announcement of Rantisi's selection appeared on Hamas web sites, that of Azzadin al Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic movement.
The head of the Hamas political bureau Khaled Mashal, also announced from Lebanon that Rantisi is Yassin's heir and will head Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Hamas leader in Gaza, Mahmoud a Zahar said that when the three-day mourning period for Yassin is over, Hamas plans internal democratic elections for a leadership that "will be known to the Palestinian people,", indicating that Rantisi's leadership was transitional.
While sources close to Hamas reported that Rantisi would lead the movement in the West Bank and Gaza, Said Siam, a Hamas leader in Gaza confirmed that Khaled Mashal is the general leader of Hamas and Rantisi was selected as a leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip only. The picture is still not clear of how Hamas would fill the big leadership vacuum after Sheikh Yassin, yet with the appointment of Rantisi, the hardliners in the movement are expected to gain more ground.
Rantisi's leadership was affirmed as dozens of thousands of Hamas supporters who gathered at Yarmuk Stadium in Gaza City sweared loyality (Bai'a) to the new leader. With the Israeli strategic decision to assassinate the leaders of Hamas, it is likely that the movement would chose to function with an underground leadership. On the day of Yassin's killing Rantisi said "from now on the Hamas will be led by a secret leadership, the 'next stage leaders,' which will lead the organization through this difficult period."
As early as after the failed assassination attempt against Rantisi last June, Hamas leadership decided to elect a political forum to serve as spokesmen and lead the social and charitable work of the movement, and at the same time elect a secret leadership to make the significant decisions. Media sources describe Rantisi as the closer of all Hamas known leaders to Ezzidin Al-Qassam brigades, the military wing of Hamas.
Rantisis was known for his continued calls to continue with the armed struggle, He stood firmly against all attempts to bring about a cease-fire, and was the most critical among all Hamas leaders to the Palestinian Authority performance.
Israel’s Assassinations Will Only Fuel Suicide Bombings
by STEVE NIVA
Not everyone in Israel was jubilant following Israel’s assassination of the much reviled Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder and spiritual leader of the Palestinian militant Islamic group Hamas.
Israel’s Interior Minister Avraham Poraz, who voted against assassinating Yassin in the security cabinet last week, warned after the attack that many Israelis could pay with their lives for the assassination.
"I fear we have opened up a cycle here and that many will pay for it with their lives," Poraz told Israel Radio. "I am afraid that Hamas’s motivation will increase. [Yassin] will become some sort of martyr… a national hero for them and I’m very sorry to say, this won’t prevent Hamas from continuing its activities."
Leader of the left-wing Yahad Party and former justice minister Yossi Beilin also criticized the assassination, asking, "How many Israelis will have to pay with their lives for this act?" He said the assassination was a "horrendous mistake that will cost Israel heavily."
This anguished criticism of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s decision to assassinate the most significant Palestinian militant leader to date is not based on naive notions about Yassin.
No one doubts that the elderly and quadriplegic Yassin was responsible for sanctioning and legitimating horrific attacks on Israeli civilians, particularly through his tortured religious rationalizations for the suicide bombings that have rocked Israel since they began in 1994.
But these Israeli critics clearly understand one of the few certainties in this bloody conflict: Israeli assassinations of a senior leader of a Palestinian militant group inevitably result in a rash of suicide bombing attacks on Israeli civilians, often within a week. And there was no one more senior than Sheikh Yassin. "Today Ariel Sharon ordered the killing of hundreds of Zionists in every street, city and centimeter of the occupied lands," a statement by the Hamas military wing said.
This predictable and deadly pattern first emerged following Israel’s assassination of the Islamic Jihad’s local leader Hani Abed in Gaza on November 2, 1994 and then of its founder Fathi Shikaki by Israeli operatives in Malta on October 28, 1995. Each was immediately followed by a wave of suicide bombings. The pattern was solidified when Israel’s 1996 assassination of the Hamas bombing mastermind Yehiya Ayash, known as "the Engineer," led Hamas to respond with a horrific series of suicide attacks on Israeli buses in the following weeks, leaving nearly 100 Israelis dead and many more injured.
Since then, the Islamic militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad appear to have adopted a routine policy of responding to civilian massacres and especially assassinations with suicide bombings.
Indeed, this striking pattern has become even more frequent and predictable since Ariel Sharon became Prime Minister in February 2001 and escalated Israel’s assassination campaign against Palestinian militant leaders, particularly when the militant groups were involved in negotiating or upholding cease-fires on attacks on Israeli civilians.
The first high level assassination of a senior Hamas political leader came with the missile strike on Sheikh Jamal Mansour on July 31 2001, which put an end to a nearly two-month cease-fire on attacks on Israeli civilians observed by Hamas. Haim Shalev, an editorialist in the Isreali daily Ma’ariv, gravely warned on August 1 that because most consider that "Israel has violated the cease-fire" it should expect a Hamas retaliation. It came in the bloody August 9 attack on a Jerusalem Sbarro pizzeria that killed 15 Israeli’s.
Sharon’s decision to assassinate the senior Hamas militant Mahmud Abu Hanoud on November 23, 2001, just when the Hamas was upholding an agreement with Arafat not to attack targets inside of Israel, resulted in simultaneous suicide bus bombings in Haifa and Jerusalem within a week.
In a widely cited article from November 25 2001, the conservative military commentator for one of Israel’s leading newspapers Yediot Aharanot, Alex Fishman, noted that this assassination had the effect of "shattering in one blow the gentleman’s agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority." He continued that "Whoever decided upon the liquidation of Abu Hanoud knew in advance that [a terrorist attack inside of Israel] would be the price. The subject was extensively discussed both by Israel’s military echelon and its political one, before it was decided to carry out the liquidation."
Israel’s assassination of the leading Fatah militant Raed Karmi on January 14 2002 during another cease-fire led the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade to deliver its first suicide bombing on January 27, 2002. This group has conducted dozens of suicide bombings since that time.
Writing in Haaretz (January 21, 2002) the Israeli journalist Danny Rubeinstein claimed that "Israel’s assassinations today generate far more damage than the benefits they are supposed to bring…it can be said explicitly this time that Karmi’s assassination has already and directly cost the lives of the ten Israelis who died in last week’s murderous terrorist attacks"
The July 22, 2002 assassination of a founding member of Hamas, Salah Shehada, in Gaza, which also killed 15 civilians, 11 of them children, resulted in a bombing at Hebrew University that killed seven Israeli’s and another suicide bombing a week later. It was widely reported that Israel’s attack on Shehada came within hours of a unilateral cease-fire declaration by both the Palestinian nationalist militia Tanzim and Hamas.
In a scathing August 2, 2002 editorial in Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper following the assassination of Shehada in Gaza City, Doron Rosenblum declared that "In short, any four-year-old child who examined this pattern of events would conclude that this government, whether consciously or not, is simply not interested in the cessation of the terrorist attacks, for they constitute its raison d’etre".
In 2003, the June 10 attempted assassination on the top Hamas political leader Abdul Aziz Rantisi just as Hamas was negotiating a truce with the Palestinian authority as part of the U.S. sponsored Road Map process was followed within 12 hours by a suicide bus bombing in Jerusalem that killed 16 Israelis.
And many more examples can be added to the list since then.
What the Israeli critics of this latest assassination likely recognize is that not only has Sharon sealed the death warrants for dozens of Israeli’s in the expected attacks to follow, but that he has also systematically derailed any attempts to reduce violence. Assassinations have only served to embolden and empower the militant groups and may have made them even more dangerous.
In effect, Sharon appears willing to sacrifice Israeli lives in order to justify his relentless efforts to colonize Palestinian lands with Israeli settlements and destroy Palestinian society so that they will submit to the crumbs cast their way. Suicide bombings have become a crucial pretext for enabling the brute force and violence needed to achieve these objectives.
Writing in Haaretz newspaper on January 18, 2002, Israeli analyst Uzi Benziman noted that there seems to be "a pattern of Israeli behavior that has recurred since Sharon began running the country: When a period of calm prevails in the confrontation with the Palestinians, circumstances are created that induce Israel to carry out military operation in a manner that renews, or accelerates, the cycle of violence."
Given Sharon’s track record, it should surprise no one that Sharon ordered the assassination of Yassin at this time.
Specifically, there is no evidence that Yassin ordered or even needed to sanction the most recent suicide bombing, the March 14 attack on the port of Ashdod that killed 10 Israelis. This attack was a joint operation undertaken by Hamas and the Al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade operatives who were following their predictable policy of responding to the previous week’s Israeli army assaults in Gaza and Nablus, which had resulted in the deaths of 10 Hamas members and 5 Brigades’ members.
But Sharon is currently facing his most severe domestic crisis to date. He is facing serious corruption charges, weekly no-confidence motions in the Knesset, and a revolt from his right wing that considers his initiative for a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza to be a capitulation to terrorism. Palestinian activism has also garnered significant local and international opposition to the wall and fence barrier in the West Bank upon which Sharon has apparently staked his career. Such factors must be included in any serious analysis of Sharon’s motivations.
None of this should be taken to exculpate militant Palestinian groups that conduct suicide bombings, who have proven more than willing to seize upon Sharon’s provocations through their myopic preoccupation with revenge to bring untold misery upon both Israelis and Palestinians. Their actions have soured the Israeli public on peace and played right into Sharon’s efforts to justify quarantining them behind the massive wall.
But the time has come for more Israelis and their supporters to join with the growing numbers of Israeli officials, security analysts, and soldiers who agree with the former Israeli Army Chief of Staff and Labor Party candidate for Prime Minister Amram Mitzna (Haaretz, August 31, 2003) that "every liquidation engenders a terrorist attack and more casualties" and that "the policy of targeted assassinations has failed and the time has come to admit it."
STEVE NIVA teaches International Politics and Middle East Studies at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. He has recently had articles appear in The Seattle Times, Al-Ahram Weekly, Middle East International and other publications. He is currently writing a book on the relationship between Israeli violence and Palestinian suicide bombings. He can be reached at: [email protected].
Ismael Hanyeh, who served as the Bureau Chief for Sheikh Yassin, said, with Rantisi standing to his right "if Ahmed Yassin were alive he would choose Rantisi as his heir."
Later, Rantisi issued a statement saying "during Yassin's life I was elected as his deputy and in accordance with the regulations of the Hamas movement, the deputy is the heir to the leader in case of his death." The announcement of Rantisi's selection appeared on Hamas web sites, that of Azzadin al Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic movement.
The head of the Hamas political bureau Khaled Mashal, also announced from Lebanon that Rantisi is Yassin's heir and will head Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Hamas leader in Gaza, Mahmoud a Zahar said that when the three-day mourning period for Yassin is over, Hamas plans internal democratic elections for a leadership that "will be known to the Palestinian people,", indicating that Rantisi's leadership was transitional.
While sources close to Hamas reported that Rantisi would lead the movement in the West Bank and Gaza, Said Siam, a Hamas leader in Gaza confirmed that Khaled Mashal is the general leader of Hamas and Rantisi was selected as a leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip only. The picture is still not clear of how Hamas would fill the big leadership vacuum after Sheikh Yassin, yet with the appointment of Rantisi, the hardliners in the movement are expected to gain more ground.
Rantisi's leadership was affirmed as dozens of thousands of Hamas supporters who gathered at Yarmuk Stadium in Gaza City sweared loyality (Bai'a) to the new leader. With the Israeli strategic decision to assassinate the leaders of Hamas, it is likely that the movement would chose to function with an underground leadership. On the day of Yassin's killing Rantisi said "from now on the Hamas will be led by a secret leadership, the 'next stage leaders,' which will lead the organization through this difficult period."
As early as after the failed assassination attempt against Rantisi last June, Hamas leadership decided to elect a political forum to serve as spokesmen and lead the social and charitable work of the movement, and at the same time elect a secret leadership to make the significant decisions. Media sources describe Rantisi as the closer of all Hamas known leaders to Ezzidin Al-Qassam brigades, the military wing of Hamas.
Rantisis was known for his continued calls to continue with the armed struggle, He stood firmly against all attempts to bring about a cease-fire, and was the most critical among all Hamas leaders to the Palestinian Authority performance.
Israel’s Assassinations Will Only Fuel Suicide Bombings
by STEVE NIVA
Not everyone in Israel was jubilant following Israel’s assassination of the much reviled Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder and spiritual leader of the Palestinian militant Islamic group Hamas.
Israel’s Interior Minister Avraham Poraz, who voted against assassinating Yassin in the security cabinet last week, warned after the attack that many Israelis could pay with their lives for the assassination.
"I fear we have opened up a cycle here and that many will pay for it with their lives," Poraz told Israel Radio. "I am afraid that Hamas’s motivation will increase. [Yassin] will become some sort of martyr… a national hero for them and I’m very sorry to say, this won’t prevent Hamas from continuing its activities."
Leader of the left-wing Yahad Party and former justice minister Yossi Beilin also criticized the assassination, asking, "How many Israelis will have to pay with their lives for this act?" He said the assassination was a "horrendous mistake that will cost Israel heavily."
This anguished criticism of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s decision to assassinate the most significant Palestinian militant leader to date is not based on naive notions about Yassin.
No one doubts that the elderly and quadriplegic Yassin was responsible for sanctioning and legitimating horrific attacks on Israeli civilians, particularly through his tortured religious rationalizations for the suicide bombings that have rocked Israel since they began in 1994.
But these Israeli critics clearly understand one of the few certainties in this bloody conflict: Israeli assassinations of a senior leader of a Palestinian militant group inevitably result in a rash of suicide bombing attacks on Israeli civilians, often within a week. And there was no one more senior than Sheikh Yassin. "Today Ariel Sharon ordered the killing of hundreds of Zionists in every street, city and centimeter of the occupied lands," a statement by the Hamas military wing said.
This predictable and deadly pattern first emerged following Israel’s assassination of the Islamic Jihad’s local leader Hani Abed in Gaza on November 2, 1994 and then of its founder Fathi Shikaki by Israeli operatives in Malta on October 28, 1995. Each was immediately followed by a wave of suicide bombings. The pattern was solidified when Israel’s 1996 assassination of the Hamas bombing mastermind Yehiya Ayash, known as "the Engineer," led Hamas to respond with a horrific series of suicide attacks on Israeli buses in the following weeks, leaving nearly 100 Israelis dead and many more injured.
Since then, the Islamic militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad appear to have adopted a routine policy of responding to civilian massacres and especially assassinations with suicide bombings.
Indeed, this striking pattern has become even more frequent and predictable since Ariel Sharon became Prime Minister in February 2001 and escalated Israel’s assassination campaign against Palestinian militant leaders, particularly when the militant groups were involved in negotiating or upholding cease-fires on attacks on Israeli civilians.
The first high level assassination of a senior Hamas political leader came with the missile strike on Sheikh Jamal Mansour on July 31 2001, which put an end to a nearly two-month cease-fire on attacks on Israeli civilians observed by Hamas. Haim Shalev, an editorialist in the Isreali daily Ma’ariv, gravely warned on August 1 that because most consider that "Israel has violated the cease-fire" it should expect a Hamas retaliation. It came in the bloody August 9 attack on a Jerusalem Sbarro pizzeria that killed 15 Israeli’s.
Sharon’s decision to assassinate the senior Hamas militant Mahmud Abu Hanoud on November 23, 2001, just when the Hamas was upholding an agreement with Arafat not to attack targets inside of Israel, resulted in simultaneous suicide bus bombings in Haifa and Jerusalem within a week.
In a widely cited article from November 25 2001, the conservative military commentator for one of Israel’s leading newspapers Yediot Aharanot, Alex Fishman, noted that this assassination had the effect of "shattering in one blow the gentleman’s agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority." He continued that "Whoever decided upon the liquidation of Abu Hanoud knew in advance that [a terrorist attack inside of Israel] would be the price. The subject was extensively discussed both by Israel’s military echelon and its political one, before it was decided to carry out the liquidation."
Israel’s assassination of the leading Fatah militant Raed Karmi on January 14 2002 during another cease-fire led the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade to deliver its first suicide bombing on January 27, 2002. This group has conducted dozens of suicide bombings since that time.
Writing in Haaretz (January 21, 2002) the Israeli journalist Danny Rubeinstein claimed that "Israel’s assassinations today generate far more damage than the benefits they are supposed to bring…it can be said explicitly this time that Karmi’s assassination has already and directly cost the lives of the ten Israelis who died in last week’s murderous terrorist attacks"
The July 22, 2002 assassination of a founding member of Hamas, Salah Shehada, in Gaza, which also killed 15 civilians, 11 of them children, resulted in a bombing at Hebrew University that killed seven Israeli’s and another suicide bombing a week later. It was widely reported that Israel’s attack on Shehada came within hours of a unilateral cease-fire declaration by both the Palestinian nationalist militia Tanzim and Hamas.
In a scathing August 2, 2002 editorial in Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper following the assassination of Shehada in Gaza City, Doron Rosenblum declared that "In short, any four-year-old child who examined this pattern of events would conclude that this government, whether consciously or not, is simply not interested in the cessation of the terrorist attacks, for they constitute its raison d’etre".
In 2003, the June 10 attempted assassination on the top Hamas political leader Abdul Aziz Rantisi just as Hamas was negotiating a truce with the Palestinian authority as part of the U.S. sponsored Road Map process was followed within 12 hours by a suicide bus bombing in Jerusalem that killed 16 Israelis.
And many more examples can be added to the list since then.
What the Israeli critics of this latest assassination likely recognize is that not only has Sharon sealed the death warrants for dozens of Israeli’s in the expected attacks to follow, but that he has also systematically derailed any attempts to reduce violence. Assassinations have only served to embolden and empower the militant groups and may have made them even more dangerous.
In effect, Sharon appears willing to sacrifice Israeli lives in order to justify his relentless efforts to colonize Palestinian lands with Israeli settlements and destroy Palestinian society so that they will submit to the crumbs cast their way. Suicide bombings have become a crucial pretext for enabling the brute force and violence needed to achieve these objectives.
Writing in Haaretz newspaper on January 18, 2002, Israeli analyst Uzi Benziman noted that there seems to be "a pattern of Israeli behavior that has recurred since Sharon began running the country: When a period of calm prevails in the confrontation with the Palestinians, circumstances are created that induce Israel to carry out military operation in a manner that renews, or accelerates, the cycle of violence."
Given Sharon’s track record, it should surprise no one that Sharon ordered the assassination of Yassin at this time.
Specifically, there is no evidence that Yassin ordered or even needed to sanction the most recent suicide bombing, the March 14 attack on the port of Ashdod that killed 10 Israelis. This attack was a joint operation undertaken by Hamas and the Al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade operatives who were following their predictable policy of responding to the previous week’s Israeli army assaults in Gaza and Nablus, which had resulted in the deaths of 10 Hamas members and 5 Brigades’ members.
But Sharon is currently facing his most severe domestic crisis to date. He is facing serious corruption charges, weekly no-confidence motions in the Knesset, and a revolt from his right wing that considers his initiative for a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza to be a capitulation to terrorism. Palestinian activism has also garnered significant local and international opposition to the wall and fence barrier in the West Bank upon which Sharon has apparently staked his career. Such factors must be included in any serious analysis of Sharon’s motivations.
None of this should be taken to exculpate militant Palestinian groups that conduct suicide bombings, who have proven more than willing to seize upon Sharon’s provocations through their myopic preoccupation with revenge to bring untold misery upon both Israelis and Palestinians. Their actions have soured the Israeli public on peace and played right into Sharon’s efforts to justify quarantining them behind the massive wall.
But the time has come for more Israelis and their supporters to join with the growing numbers of Israeli officials, security analysts, and soldiers who agree with the former Israeli Army Chief of Staff and Labor Party candidate for Prime Minister Amram Mitzna (Haaretz, August 31, 2003) that "every liquidation engenders a terrorist attack and more casualties" and that "the policy of targeted assassinations has failed and the time has come to admit it."
STEVE NIVA teaches International Politics and Middle East Studies at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. He has recently had articles appear in The Seattle Times, Al-Ahram Weekly, Middle East International and other publications. He is currently writing a book on the relationship between Israeli violence and Palestinian suicide bombings. He can be reached at: [email protected].
23 mar 2004
"If we will 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.
Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said Tuesday that Israel would continue with targeting more Hamas leaders after the assassination of Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. "If we will 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.
A security source reported Tuesday that even without a retaliation from the side of Hamas, Israeli Defense chiefs have decided to attempt to kill the entire Hamas leadership. "There is no immunity to anyone. And that means anyone to the last person," Minister of interior security Tzahi Hanegbi said.
Israeli Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon hinted Tuesday that Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah's could soon become marked for assassination. "Their [referring to Arafat and Nasrallah] response to the assassination showed that they understand that their turn is drawing near." He said.
The new security strategy was under considerations for months, way before the Israeli Prime minister Ariel Sharon's presented his disengagement plan. To initiate a strategy of massive targeted killings is expected to spark harsh international criticisms unless, Sharon guarantee the backing of the U.S. administration and present the world with an extra leg, namely a political plan. Palestinian commentators believe that Sharon's disengagement was designed to serve this purpose only.
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin
When, in October 1997, the halfblind, almost wholly paralysed Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who has been killed in an Israeli air strike at the age of around 67, arrived in Gaza, after being released from an Israeli jail in exchange for Mossad agents caught redhanded trying to assassinate a colleague in Jordan, one Arab commentator likened him to Nelson Mandela. The comparison must have made Yasser Arafat seethe inwardly, even as he heaped homage on the returning hero. In his view, if there were any Palestinian Mandela - any unique, historic leader of the Palestinian people - it was himself.
In truth, neither Arafat nor Yassin had Mandela's special greatness. But of the two, it was Yassin, the founder-leader of the militant Islamist organisation Hamas, who came closer. The reason was not to be found in his beliefs - which, in their narrow, obscurantist, religious frame, were far removed from the South African's lofty humanism and compassion - but in the facts of his career, and the part that certain, very personal, qualities - of selflessness, simplicity, conviction and a true sense of service - played in bringing it to fruition.
Yassin had personal glory largely thrust upon him. He was in his late 50s, and a very sick man, before he became a really potent force on the Middle East stage; and, as a prisoner in enemy Israeli jails, he had little practical to do with the devastating suicide bombings, from which, more than anything else, he derived that force.
Indeed, for most of his career, as a local leader of the international Muslim Brotherhood, Yassin shared its deep-rooted, strategically motivated opposition to direct, violent action against the Zionist foe, let alone of such an extreme and atrocious kind. He was more devoted to the revival of Islam than to the salvation of Palestine, deeming that the second goal could only be pursued after the completion of the first.
There had actually been a time when, on account of his quietism, the ideological challenge he posed to militant secular nationalism, and his opposition to the armed struggle espoused by the Palestine Liberation Organisation, the Israelis looked benevolently on Yassin and his works.
The PLO nationalists even branded him a collaborator.
Yassin was born into a relatively well-to-do, middleclass farming family from the village of Tor, in southern Palestine. When, in 1948, the state of Israel arose on the debris of the Palestinian community, the shock of exile, and the misery of the al-Shati' refugee camp in Gaza, which became his new home, were critical in the formation of his sense of mission and his religious convictions.
Subsequent physical disability doubtless further strengthened them. As a 12-year-old, he suffered irreparable damage to his spinal column during a football game; at first, he could manage with crutches, but later, inert in arms and legs, he was confined to a wheelchair. After finishing his schooling, Yassin became a teacher until, in 1964, he enrolled in the English department of Ain Shams University, Cairo. There, he proved more interested in radical interpretations of the Koran than Shakespeare. He associated with the founding, Egyptian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. But with President Nasser and secular nationalist ideologies then at their apogee, the brotherhood was suffering persecution and political eclipse. Thanks to that, and lack of money, Yassin had to return to Gaza, where he continued teaching until, in 1984, his disability forced him into early retirement.
Meanwhile, in the shadow of his formal career, he was laying the foundations of his future eminence as both a religious and political seer. He founded al-Mujamma' al-Islami, the Islamic Centre, which soon came to control virtually all religious organisations - including the Islamic University - in Gaza.
He preached the standard Islamist view that Israel, by its very existence, was an affront to Islam, and that Palestine was the "property of Muslims till the day of judgment" that no ruler had the right to give up.
But while it was the duty of Muslims to wage a jihad to liberate Palestine in its entirety, that time was not yet. For the foreseeable future, Yassin believed, the struggle was cultural, moral and educational; it was about combating secularism and the reform and re-Islamicisation of Palestinian society - a preparation for jihad, rather than jihad itself. All this was so reassuring to the Israelis that, in 1979, they granted the Gaza centre an official licence.
Throughout the 1970s and 80s, Arafat's PLO suffered setback after setback; its reputation as a corrupt, opportunist, self-serving bureaucracy grew and grew. In contrast, political Islam was presenting itself everywhere as a new, clean, dynamic force for political and social change. In Palestine, it naturally took on an additional dimension - the harnessing of religion, as an ideology and a frame for action, to the national struggle.
It was an extremist splinter group of the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic Jihad, which, in the early 1980s, first embarked on armed struggle in the name of Islam - and achieved instant popularity among the Palestinians for doing so.
The challenge to the traditional gradualism of the mainstream brotherhood could not be ignored. Perhaps Yassin was already contemplating a similar revolutionary step. At any rate, in 1984 the Israelis discovered an arms cache in the mosque he had built in the Jaurat slum where he now lived. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Upon his release a year later, as part of an exchange of Palestinian prisoners for Israeli soldiers held in Lebanon, he did not take that step, remaining faithful to the traditional brotherhood strategy of preaching and social work, rather than direct action against the Israeli enemy.
It took the first intifada (the largely unarmed, six-year uprising that preceded the current, far more violent one) to transform Yassin wholly and irrevocably, and to pitchfork him into the forefront of the Palestinian struggle as a serious rival to Arafat himself.
That spontaneous eruption surprised him as much as it did everyone else. When it began, in December 1987, he was already the most prominent religious figure in Gaza, perhaps even Palestine as a whole. But he was not Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini, no great prophet or original thinker.
The reasons for his sudden emergence as a real power in the land were essentially political. On the one hand, a relative quietist still, Yassin did not want to throw the Muslim Brotherhood wholeheartedly into the new struggle, endangering everything he and his associates had constructed with such exertions and sacrifice.
At the same time, he knew that Palestinian society was clamouring for serious action against the Israeli occupiers, and that, with an organisation already in being - and the PLO increasingly discredited - the Islamists were ideally placed to seize the leadership of it.
It was Yassin's idea to establish an ostensibly separate body called Hamas, or Zeal, that would divert attention from the brotherhood. Such was its impact, however, that it soon completely submerged the mother body from which it had stemmed.
Yassin justified the change of strategy by saying that new realities - a product of the "divine will" - had imposed the need for a new, activist form of jihad. He also offered more than the PLO ever could: a special kind of struggle that combined moral purity and social action with the promise of divine grace - not just redemption of the homeland, but salvation of the troubled soul as well.
Before long, Hamas was outdoing, in violent deeds, all the secular nationalist groups that had formerly mocked the Islamists for their inaction. In 1989, it took Yassin back to an Israeli prison, this time with a life sentence for his alleged involvement in the abduction and murder of an Israeli soldier.
Like a Mandela - unseen, unheard, yet charismatic in his prison cell - now half blind and deaf as well as crippled, Yassin's prestige grew inexorably, just as that of Arafat, the official Mr Palestine, an ever-greater travesty of all that Mandela ever stood for, withered beneath the glare of a publicity he could no longer escape.
But it was the self-sacrificing zeal of Yassin's followers that achieved this for him. It was only after the massacre of 30 worshipppers in a Hebron mosque, by a suicidal Israeli settler in February 1994, that the Hamas suicide bombers really got going.
Whether or not Yassin, who was still in jail at the time, really willed it, they became what, with the coming of the second intifada, they remain to this day, the ultimate expression of Islamist violence, terrifying the Israelis, undermining Arafat, and, in symbiotic connivance with their extremist counterparts on the other side, pushing the whole Arab-Israeli struggle towards the dark extremities of the inter-communal fanaticism from which Mandela rescued South Africa.
Yassin is survived by his wife Halima and their 11 children.
· Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Hamas leader, born c1936; died March 22 2004
Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said Tuesday that Israel would continue with targeting more Hamas leaders after the assassination of Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. "If we will 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.
A security source reported Tuesday that even without a retaliation from the side of Hamas, Israeli Defense chiefs have decided to attempt to kill the entire Hamas leadership. "There is no immunity to anyone. And that means anyone to the last person," Minister of interior security Tzahi Hanegbi said.
Israeli Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon hinted Tuesday that Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah's could soon become marked for assassination. "Their [referring to Arafat and Nasrallah] response to the assassination showed that they understand that their turn is drawing near." He said.
The new security strategy was under considerations for months, way before the Israeli Prime minister Ariel Sharon's presented his disengagement plan. To initiate a strategy of massive targeted killings is expected to spark harsh international criticisms unless, Sharon guarantee the backing of the U.S. administration and present the world with an extra leg, namely a political plan. Palestinian commentators believe that Sharon's disengagement was designed to serve this purpose only.
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin
When, in October 1997, the halfblind, almost wholly paralysed Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who has been killed in an Israeli air strike at the age of around 67, arrived in Gaza, after being released from an Israeli jail in exchange for Mossad agents caught redhanded trying to assassinate a colleague in Jordan, one Arab commentator likened him to Nelson Mandela. The comparison must have made Yasser Arafat seethe inwardly, even as he heaped homage on the returning hero. In his view, if there were any Palestinian Mandela - any unique, historic leader of the Palestinian people - it was himself.
In truth, neither Arafat nor Yassin had Mandela's special greatness. But of the two, it was Yassin, the founder-leader of the militant Islamist organisation Hamas, who came closer. The reason was not to be found in his beliefs - which, in their narrow, obscurantist, religious frame, were far removed from the South African's lofty humanism and compassion - but in the facts of his career, and the part that certain, very personal, qualities - of selflessness, simplicity, conviction and a true sense of service - played in bringing it to fruition.
Yassin had personal glory largely thrust upon him. He was in his late 50s, and a very sick man, before he became a really potent force on the Middle East stage; and, as a prisoner in enemy Israeli jails, he had little practical to do with the devastating suicide bombings, from which, more than anything else, he derived that force.
Indeed, for most of his career, as a local leader of the international Muslim Brotherhood, Yassin shared its deep-rooted, strategically motivated opposition to direct, violent action against the Zionist foe, let alone of such an extreme and atrocious kind. He was more devoted to the revival of Islam than to the salvation of Palestine, deeming that the second goal could only be pursued after the completion of the first.
There had actually been a time when, on account of his quietism, the ideological challenge he posed to militant secular nationalism, and his opposition to the armed struggle espoused by the Palestine Liberation Organisation, the Israelis looked benevolently on Yassin and his works.
The PLO nationalists even branded him a collaborator.
Yassin was born into a relatively well-to-do, middleclass farming family from the village of Tor, in southern Palestine. When, in 1948, the state of Israel arose on the debris of the Palestinian community, the shock of exile, and the misery of the al-Shati' refugee camp in Gaza, which became his new home, were critical in the formation of his sense of mission and his religious convictions.
Subsequent physical disability doubtless further strengthened them. As a 12-year-old, he suffered irreparable damage to his spinal column during a football game; at first, he could manage with crutches, but later, inert in arms and legs, he was confined to a wheelchair. After finishing his schooling, Yassin became a teacher until, in 1964, he enrolled in the English department of Ain Shams University, Cairo. There, he proved more interested in radical interpretations of the Koran than Shakespeare. He associated with the founding, Egyptian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. But with President Nasser and secular nationalist ideologies then at their apogee, the brotherhood was suffering persecution and political eclipse. Thanks to that, and lack of money, Yassin had to return to Gaza, where he continued teaching until, in 1984, his disability forced him into early retirement.
Meanwhile, in the shadow of his formal career, he was laying the foundations of his future eminence as both a religious and political seer. He founded al-Mujamma' al-Islami, the Islamic Centre, which soon came to control virtually all religious organisations - including the Islamic University - in Gaza.
He preached the standard Islamist view that Israel, by its very existence, was an affront to Islam, and that Palestine was the "property of Muslims till the day of judgment" that no ruler had the right to give up.
But while it was the duty of Muslims to wage a jihad to liberate Palestine in its entirety, that time was not yet. For the foreseeable future, Yassin believed, the struggle was cultural, moral and educational; it was about combating secularism and the reform and re-Islamicisation of Palestinian society - a preparation for jihad, rather than jihad itself. All this was so reassuring to the Israelis that, in 1979, they granted the Gaza centre an official licence.
Throughout the 1970s and 80s, Arafat's PLO suffered setback after setback; its reputation as a corrupt, opportunist, self-serving bureaucracy grew and grew. In contrast, political Islam was presenting itself everywhere as a new, clean, dynamic force for political and social change. In Palestine, it naturally took on an additional dimension - the harnessing of religion, as an ideology and a frame for action, to the national struggle.
It was an extremist splinter group of the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic Jihad, which, in the early 1980s, first embarked on armed struggle in the name of Islam - and achieved instant popularity among the Palestinians for doing so.
The challenge to the traditional gradualism of the mainstream brotherhood could not be ignored. Perhaps Yassin was already contemplating a similar revolutionary step. At any rate, in 1984 the Israelis discovered an arms cache in the mosque he had built in the Jaurat slum where he now lived. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Upon his release a year later, as part of an exchange of Palestinian prisoners for Israeli soldiers held in Lebanon, he did not take that step, remaining faithful to the traditional brotherhood strategy of preaching and social work, rather than direct action against the Israeli enemy.
It took the first intifada (the largely unarmed, six-year uprising that preceded the current, far more violent one) to transform Yassin wholly and irrevocably, and to pitchfork him into the forefront of the Palestinian struggle as a serious rival to Arafat himself.
That spontaneous eruption surprised him as much as it did everyone else. When it began, in December 1987, he was already the most prominent religious figure in Gaza, perhaps even Palestine as a whole. But he was not Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini, no great prophet or original thinker.
The reasons for his sudden emergence as a real power in the land were essentially political. On the one hand, a relative quietist still, Yassin did not want to throw the Muslim Brotherhood wholeheartedly into the new struggle, endangering everything he and his associates had constructed with such exertions and sacrifice.
At the same time, he knew that Palestinian society was clamouring for serious action against the Israeli occupiers, and that, with an organisation already in being - and the PLO increasingly discredited - the Islamists were ideally placed to seize the leadership of it.
It was Yassin's idea to establish an ostensibly separate body called Hamas, or Zeal, that would divert attention from the brotherhood. Such was its impact, however, that it soon completely submerged the mother body from which it had stemmed.
Yassin justified the change of strategy by saying that new realities - a product of the "divine will" - had imposed the need for a new, activist form of jihad. He also offered more than the PLO ever could: a special kind of struggle that combined moral purity and social action with the promise of divine grace - not just redemption of the homeland, but salvation of the troubled soul as well.
Before long, Hamas was outdoing, in violent deeds, all the secular nationalist groups that had formerly mocked the Islamists for their inaction. In 1989, it took Yassin back to an Israeli prison, this time with a life sentence for his alleged involvement in the abduction and murder of an Israeli soldier.
Like a Mandela - unseen, unheard, yet charismatic in his prison cell - now half blind and deaf as well as crippled, Yassin's prestige grew inexorably, just as that of Arafat, the official Mr Palestine, an ever-greater travesty of all that Mandela ever stood for, withered beneath the glare of a publicity he could no longer escape.
But it was the self-sacrificing zeal of Yassin's followers that achieved this for him. It was only after the massacre of 30 worshipppers in a Hebron mosque, by a suicidal Israeli settler in February 1994, that the Hamas suicide bombers really got going.
Whether or not Yassin, who was still in jail at the time, really willed it, they became what, with the coming of the second intifada, they remain to this day, the ultimate expression of Islamist violence, terrifying the Israelis, undermining Arafat, and, in symbiotic connivance with their extremist counterparts on the other side, pushing the whole Arab-Israeli struggle towards the dark extremities of the inter-communal fanaticism from which Mandela rescued South Africa.
Yassin is survived by his wife Halima and their 11 children.
· Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Hamas leader, born c1936; died March 22 2004
