Israeli warplanes launched a missile attack in Gaza early Tuesday, killing the leader of the military wing of the militant Hamas group and at least 11 other people, Israeli and Palestinian officials said. Hamas promised heavy and immediate retaliation.
Israeli warplanes fired a missile at the home of Salah Shehada, founder of Izzadine el-Qassam, Hamas' military organization, collapsing the building and four houses around it, residents said.
Announcements on loudspeakers in Gaza said Shehadeh was wounded but alive, and other sources reported that it was Shehada's wife who was killed. But a senior Hamas official, Ismail Haniyeh, told reporters that "we have confirmation that the leader of the military wing of Hamas, Sheik Salah Shehada, was killed in this attack."
The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz quoted Israeli officials as also confirming that Shehada, 40, who headed the Israeli military's most-wanted list, was dead. The Israeli military had no official comment.
Hospital officials said that 12 Palestinians, including five children, were killed and that more than 150 people were wounded. The strike came just after Hamas had issued unusually conciliatory remarks in response to Israel's decision to lift some restrictions on Palestinians and a suggestion that it may withdraw troops from the West Bank.
Shehada, a close aide to Sheik Ahmed Yassin, Hamas' leader, had emerged in recent years as a possible successor to Yassin, who is in poor health and uses a wheelchair. Israel has tried to kill Shehada several times before, but until Tuesday he had always escaped.
Izzadine el-Qassam has claimed responsibility for dozens of attacks against Israelis during nearly two years of fighting, including many suicide bomb attacks, and Israeli military sources told Ha'aretz they expected Hamas to make "every effort" to hit Israel as quickly and as hard as possible in revenge, a warning that Haniyeh echoed.
"Not only will Hamas take revenge for the martyrs, all the Palestinian people will unify to revenge for the blood of the martyrs," he said at Shifa hospital, where the dead and wounded were taken.
HUGE EXPLOSION
In recent days, Israeli forces have struck twice at Gaza, targeting metal workshops where the Israelis say Palestinians were manufacturing mortar shells and rockets. Palestinians fire mortars at Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip almost every day.
Early Tuesday, two Israeli F-16 warplanes circled over Gaza before one of them fired a single missile at Shehad's home, witnesses said.
Jamal Halaby, a Palestinian police officer who lives nearby, said he saw the missile streaking across the sky and then heard a huge explosion. "I fell out of my bed, and I found myself a minute later covered in dust and stones and [heard] the sounds of my children screaming and crying."
The air strike came as Israel and the Palestinians were trading ideas about reducing tension in the West Bank and easing Israeli restrictions. Last month, Israel sent troops into West Bank cities and towns for the second time since March, following Palestinian suicide bomb attacks.
Officials on both sides said Israel might pull its forces out of two of the towns if the Palestinians can maintain security there.
Before Tuesday's attack, a hot controversy over Israel's plan to deport the families of suspected militants to the Gaza Strip had also cooled somewhat. Sixteen West Bank Palestinians facing deportation by Israel withdrew their legal action against the move after receiving an appeal guarantee, Israeli security sources said Sunday.
Israel did not issue a formal explanation for the decision. In a separate glimmer of goodwill, Israel on Monday released $20 million in Palestinian tax revenues it seized after the Palestinian uprising against occupation flared in 2000 and said more could be transferred if the funds were not misused.
TEST FOR PALESTINIAN SECURITY?
Over the weekend, Israel proposed withdrawing troops from some Palestinian areas in the West Bank to test the ability of Palestinian security to prevent attacks on civilians.
The proposal was made Saturday night at talks with Palestinians as part of an effort to find ways to ease the tough restrictions on Palestinians in the West Bank, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said.
Israel argues that many of these restrictions were necessary to halt militant attacks on Israelis.
"We have no interest in staying in those places where the Palestinians can prove that they can take control," Peres told Israel Radio.
Israel's army has occupied seven of the eight main Palestinian cities and towns in the West Bank for the past month, keeping hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in their houses under a rolling curfew.
Peres did not specify from where troops might be withdrawn, but Army Radio said the forces could withdraw from Hebron and Bethlehem as early as Tuesday if those areas remain quiet.
The Palestinians say their security forces cannot re-establish control until after the Israeli forces pull out. Many Palestinian security force buildings have been damaged or destroyed in Israeli attacks.
"The key to breaking the circle of violence begins with the Israeli withdrawal from all the Palestinian cities," Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo said.
HAMAS SPELLS OUT CONDITIONS
"Basically what I would say to the occupation army is to leave ... the Palestinian cities in all the West Bank that were occupied," Yassin told reporters in the Gaza Strip.
"And stop your aggression, demolishing homes. Release prisoners and stop assassinations. Once the occupation and all those measures against our people stop, we are ready to totally study stopping martyrdom operations, in a positive way."
Yassin did not clarify whether any reconsidered position on attacks would apply both to Israel and to Israeli soldiers and Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza or would be limited geographically.
After a month-long Israeli offensive in the West Bank ended in May, Yassin told Reuters that Hamas would launch attacks on Israel as long as its army continued raids into Palestinian-ruled areas and killed civilians.
(China Daily July 22, 2002)
