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Israel to Resume Targeted Hamas Killings

Posted on: Friday, 16 January 2004, 06:00 CST

Israel is expected to resume targeted killings of senior Hamas militants, a security official said, after a Palestinian suicide attacker blew herself up at a Gaza crossing, killing four Israelis.

Top army commanders met at the Defense Ministry on Thursday to consider a response, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Thousands marched through Gaza City during Thursday's funeral of the first female Hamas suicide bomber, Reem Raiyshi, 22, a mother of two small children, who was responsible for Wednesday's attack. Israel, meanwhile, sealed the Gaza Strip to review security at border crossings.

After high-profile but ineffective attacks against Palestinian leaders in the summer - including the bombing of a house where the entire Hamas leadership was meeting and a helicopter strike aimed at the top Hamas spokesman - Israel had scaled back its attacks in concert with a significant drop in Hamas bombings.

There was never evidence of even an unspoken agreement between the two enemies. Israel insisted the downturn was attributable to its own security forces, claiming that they arrested as many as 30 potential suicide bombers.

For their part, Hamas leaders, though often in hiding to avoid Israeli strikes, kept up their militant pronouncements and rebuffed efforts by Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia and Egyptian mediators to declare a halt to attacks against Israelis.

The suicide bombing on Wednesday ended the "so-called quiet period," Israeli air force commander Maj. Gen. Dan Halutz said.

Halutz denied that the reduction in targeted killings was linked to a slowdown in Palestinian attacks.

"Since it is a preventive measure, it has nothing to do with the number of casualties that we have," he said at a meeting of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Air force helicopters launching missiles have been used in most of the targeted killings, which Palestinians denounce as assassinations of their leaders.

Without giving details, Halutz said the air force and military intelligence have developed "pinpoint" methods to "hit only those who deserve it." However, dozens of bystanders have been killed in air strikes in towns, cities and refugee camps.

At the Defense Ministry meeting, it also was decided to close the Gaza crossings only briefly, until Sunday, to minimize hardship for ordinary Palestinians, the official said.

The closure prevented thousands of Palestinian workers from getting to their jobs in Israel and a nearby industrial zone. The workers, among the few with jobs in the impoverished region, worried life would only become harder following the bombing. Some workers, though unwilling to directly criticize Hamas, questioned the wisdom of the target - the crossing they must use to get to their jobs.

"I think we have the right to fight to end the occupation, but at the same time we have to think 100 times before any act," said Fawaz Radwan, 42, who works in a food factory near the Israeli town of Ashkelon.

Even such veiled criticism remains relatively rare, though some Palestinians grumble in private about tighter travel bans or other hardships caused by the militants' actions. In a society where consensus is valued, criticizing the armed groups openly is seen by many as a betrayal.

Wednesday's attack at the Erez border crossing between Israel and Gaza was the first time the Islamic militant Hamas sent a female suicide bomber, and the group threatened more violence.

Masked gunmen carried Raiyshi's coffin, draped in the green Hamas flag.

"It is not enough to call her a hero. Calling her hero does not give the whole truth. This woman abandoned her husband and children in order to win paradise," a Hamas leader, Mahmoud Zahar, said in a eulogy.

The Israeli security official said the Hamas spiritual leader, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, issued a religious edict permitting women to carry out bombings, something Hamas resisted in the past, and that he personally approved Wednesday's attack.

The official said Yassin apparently had not been marked for death by Israel.

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