Israel considers assassinating Palestinian Prime Minister

The Israel Air Force launched a fresh round of air strikes on militant targets in Gaza on May 22 as the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, struggled to raise dwindling hopes of restoring the shattered ceasefire between Hamas and Israel. Israeli aircraft launched two attacks in northern Gaza and two in central Gaza. Palestinian medics say at least 34 Palestinians have been killed in the air strikes since May 16, the majority of which, but by no means all, were militants. Palestinian sources said at least seven people were wounded in the latest airstrikes, in Israel's response to about 150 rocket attacks in the past week. The rocket fire has forced thousands of Israeli residents close to the Gaza border to flee. On May22, the Israeli government said it would consider assassinating the Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. Ephraim Sneh, Israel's Deputy Defense Minister, said "no one" in Hamas, including Haniyeh, was immune from strikes. Sneh described the Hamas leadership as "terrorists in suits" and told the Associated Press: "We don't care if he's a ringleader, a perpetrator of rocket attacks or if he is one of the political leaders. No one has immunity." Police said that about half of Sderot's 25,000 residents had left the town to escape the rockets, either on their own initiative or under a government-sponsored temporary evacuation plan. Most schools have been closed for the past 10 days. Hamas officials threatened an escalation in violence if their leaders were killed while Ahmed Yusef, an adviser to Haniyeh, offered to discuss a truce in the West Bank and Gaza if Israel stopped its "mad attacks." Twice this week, Amir Peretz, the Defense Minister and a native of Sderot, warned that Israel will not refrain from launching a massive ground operation. Peretz said Hamas should "not delude itself. We will not be deterred from any decision–including a ground operation." Three Israeli divisions comprising 20,000 troops are on standby, ready for a full-scale invasion. In the deadliest attack so far, eight Palestinians were killed when a missile fired by an Israeli military aircraft smashed into the home of a Hamas lawmaker on May 20. Khalil al-Haya was not at home at the time of the blast, but seven of his family members, including his 60-year-old father, were killed in the strike. The day before, Peretz had warned Hamas to be "very afraid." The strike immediately raised questions as to whether Israel was also renewing attacks on the political leaders of Hamas, as it did several years ago when it assassinated the group's most senior leaders. That assessment was strengthened by threats issued the next day by two senior cabinet ministers. Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter warned that the Syria-based Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal might be targeted. Dichter, a former head of the Shin Bet internal security service, said that Mashaal, whom Israel tried to assassinate in Jordan in 1997, was "not immune, not in Damascus and not anywhere else. I'm convinced," he said in an interview on Army Radio, "that at the first opportunity, he will be bade farewell." Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer followed that up with a more sweeping threat. There was no distinction, he said, "between those who carry out the [rocket] attacks [into Israel] and those who give the orders. I say we have to put them all in the crosshairs." Meanwhile, Abbas was hoping to open talks with Hamas leaders on the mounting conflict with Israel and the fragile ceasefire between Hamas and Fatah after more than a week of internal fighting that cost at least 50 Palestinian lives. Abbas and Haniyeh met in the Gaza Strip on May 23 in an effort to restore a cease-fire with Israel. The meeting ended with the two sides agreeing their factions would meet again. "We are working to recommit to the truce," Abbas aide Nabil Abu Rdeneh said. Haniyeh aide Ghazi Hamad said in a statement that the two leaders called on the international community to protect the Palestinians and pressure Israel to stop the attacks. Salah Bardawil, a Hamas spokesman, said Israel must stop its attacks if there is to be a cease-fire. "There is no room to talk about a truce while there is Israeli aggression and escalation," he said. Prior to the meeting, a senior Haniyeh aide said the Palestinians would not agree to a truce that is limited to the Gaza Strip and does not include the West Bank. "If it is going to be for Gaza only, then no one will be able to convince the Palestinian resistance factions to commit to that," said Haniyeh political advisor Ahmed Yousef. An agreement signed by Hamas and Fatah in February to share power collapsed last week, when Interior Minister Hani al-Qawasme resigned because he could not control the various factions of gunmen supposedly under his command. Al-Qawasmeh had been selected as a neutral choice to lead Gaza's security forces but his neutrality also meant he lacked any gunmen of his own, thus making it impossible for him to exercise any authority over Gaza's many different semi-official armed factions. The fighting started after much-vaunted plans for a joint Fatah-Hamas security force to deploy in the streets failed to materialize, apparently after resistance from Fatah security chiefs. Instead, 3,000 members of Fatah-dominated forces were deployed in Gaza city, where they came under fire from Hamas gunmen. Al-Qawasmeh, who is closer to Hamas than Fatah, then resigned, complaining of a lack of security force cooperation. Within a day, Gaza blew apart, once again sending masked gunmen to the streets in a flurry of gunfights, hostage-takings and a siege of the Islamic University - the intellectual birthplace of Hamas, and a symbolic and military flashpoint over the past year of conflict between the two parties. Even as the guns in the Fatah-Hamas conflict began to quiet, Israel responded with an unexpected offensive against Hamas-related targets and officials. Previously, with a few exceptions, Hamas had been honoring a six-month-old ceasefire with the Israelis and had not been firing rockets itself. But its security forces had also ignored repeated attacks on Israel by rocket teams from Islamic Jihad, a militant group of increasing power which ignores domestic Palestinian politics and internal clashes in favour of attacks on Israel. And Islamic Jihad has refused every overture to negotiate on any aspect of Palestinian-Israeli peace. As the battles with Fatah broke out across the strip, Hamas quickly entered the rocket-firing fray and the nearby Israeli town of Serdot took damage and casualties. But the Israeli offensive, which targeted not just rocket teams but top Hamas commanders, installations and infrastructure, also left the group reeling as it ordered its men to disperse from all known Hamas installations, stay off mobile phones and avoid large gatherings that could be targeted by superior Israeli military technology. The US and Israel have openly supported Fatah in the fight by supplying money, equipment and training to its top military commander in Gaza, Mohammed Dahlan. With Israeli connivance, about 500 Palestinian Authority soldiers trained under a US-coordinated program to counter Hamas were rushed from Egypt into Gaza last week to help Fatah. The troops' deployment illustrates the increasingly partisan role that Israel and the Bush administration are taking in the volatile Palestinian political situation. The effort to fortify the armed opposition to Hamas, which the United States and Israel categorize as a terrorist organization, follows attempts to isolate the radical Islamic movement internationally and cut off its sources of financial aid. The Bush administration recently approved $40 million to train the Palestinian Presidential Guard, a force of about 4,000 troops under Abbas's direct control, but both Israel and the United States, each deeply unpopular among Arabs in the region, have been trying to avoid the perception of taking sides in a conflict that this week in Gaza has resembled a nascent civil war.