Palestinian PM low on Israel’s hit-list: official

By Dan Williams

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel is unlikely to target
Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh despite recent
threats to kill leaders of Hamas if the Islamic group resumes
suicide bombings, a senior Israeli defense official said on
Friday.

Deadly Israeli shelling on the Gaza Strip last week
prompted Hamas to scrap a 16-month-old truce and fire rockets
into the Jewish state. The flare-up stirred concern of a return
to Hamas suicide bombings and Israeli air strikes against Hamas
chiefs.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has refused to rule out
Haniyeh, a top Hamas leader, as a target. But the senior
defense official said Haniyeh was not high on the hit-list due
to Israel’s belief he was not directly involved in attacks.

“I would say the chances of him (Haniyeh) being left alone
for now are very good,” the official, who requested anonymity
due to the sensitivity of the subject, told Reuters.

“Our assessment is that Haniyeh is not directing the
terrorism. But there are contacts between him and the (Hamas)
military wing,” the official said.

The remarks suggested a change from Israel’s past strategy
of targeting Palestinian political leaders in response to
violence by their loyalists during a more than 5-year-old
uprising.

Late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat spent the last two
years of his life under virtual house arrest and death threats
by Israel, which accused him of ordering attacks. He denied it.

ISRAELI TARGETS

Israeli air strikes killed Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed
Yassin, as well as senior Hamas leader Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi,
in 2004. Hamas was in the midst of a suicide-bomb campaign at
the time but said Yassin and Rantissi had purely political
functions.

The Israeli defense official disputed this, saying that
Yassin and Rantissi had masterminded rocket salvoes from Gaza
and bombings inside Israel.

But he said the command structure in Hamas had changed
since it won Palestinian elections in January. The Islamists
formed a government in March.

“That was when Hamas was in the opposition,” the official
said, referring to the role of Yassin and Rantissi.

“The dynamic has changed now that it is in government.”

Hamas is sworn to the Jewish state’s destruction and has
resisted foreign pressure — including a Western aid embargo on
the Palestinian Authority — aimed at softening its stance.

But the official said Israel believed there was a growing
rift between the Gaza-based Haniyeh and Hamas’s supreme leader
Khaled Meshaal, who lives in exile in Damascus.

“There are several divisions in Hamas. One of them is
between the military and political wings,” the official said.

“The Hamas military wing is predominantly under Meshaal’s
control. I imagine it is easier to order terrorist attacks when
you are abroad and feeling relatively protected from Israel.”

But he added that there was regular communication between
Haniyeh and Meshaal, both of whom have shrugged off Israel’s
threats. Meshaal, who is based in Syria, survived a 1997
attempt on his life by Israeli assassins while in Jordan.