Steve Quayle News Alerts

Sep. 7, 2003
Margot Dudkevitch

Hamas vowed to assassinate Prime Minister Ariel Sharon shortly after IAF missiles slammed Saturday into a Gaza City building where senior Hamas leaders were meeting, among them founder and spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.

No one was killed in the attack, but Yassin and 15 others were lightly wounded. Israeli officials were unable to confirm that the top Hamas bomb maker and No. 1 on Israel's most-wanted list, Muhammad Deif, was at the meeting.

Deif was seriously wounded in another IAF attack last September but has since returned to activity.
The incident occurred shortly after Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) handed in his resignation to PA Chairman Yasser Arafat and European Union foreign ministers announced plans to outlaw the Hamas political wing.

In response to the Hamas threat, security forces raised the level of alert and increased their presence in shopping malls, central bus stations, and other areas. The security establishment yesterday registered 36 warnings of terrorist attacks against Israelis.

Israeli security officials said the attack was not aimed at Yassin.

"The target was not Ahmed Yassin but the senior Hamas leadership, which was meeting in the apartment to plan strategy, upgrade their capability, and plot further rocket and terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens," a senior Israeli security official told The Jerusalem Post.

"No one is immune, and just as in recent weeks security forces have thwarted numerous attacks and captured and killed terrorists, we will continue until the Hamas infrastructure is destroyed."
In order to avert civilian casualties, the IAF opted to use a small quantity of explosives in the strike, an official said.

The meeting of the Hamas leadership was taking place at the second-floor apartment of Dr. Marwan Abu Ras, a professor at the local Islamic University. Abu Ras later told reporters that Yassin and Ismail Haniya, a senior Hamas leader, left the building minutes before the missiles struck. "We heard a loud noise and then everything went black and then red before my eyes," Abu Ras said.

Other reports said Yassin's bodyguard took him to the local Shifa Hospital suffering from a shrapnel wound to the right shoulder. Shortly after his arrival at the hospital, Hamas officials declared over a loudspeaker, "We warn Sharon that his head is now wanted by our troops."

Haniya, who was unharmed, vowed to avenge Israel's assassination attempt. "We tell Sharon that if he thinks by sending his F-16, or even by assassinating Sheikh Yassin or any other Palestinian leader, he can intimidate Hamas or make it renounce jihad, he is mistaken," Haniya told Al Jazeera television station.

He said the missiles were fired from an IAF warplane; however, Palestinian residents said they were fired from IAF helicopters.

Palestinians reported that the building suffered extensive damage and that a mosque and other buildings in the densely crowded neighborhood were also damaged.

Meanwhile, a statement issued by the PA in Ramallah condemned the IAF attack. "The Palestinian leadership condemns and denounces in all possible words this horrible crime, which was perpetrated by the Israeli government against Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and his brethren, and considers it a grave escalation and an attempt to disrupt all the efforts of the Palestinian leadership to calm the volatile situations and resume the cease-fire.

Furthermore, the leadership called on the Quartet, the US administration, and fellow Arab states to intervene and force Israel to cease immediately the extrajudicial execution policy against Palestinian leaders.

Israeli security officials declared that Hamas had made a strategic decision to hamper the road map plan and destroy all possibilities of an end to terrorism and a return to negotiations. Since 1993, Hamas has dispatched 115 suicide bombers, 74 of them since the outbreak of violence in September 2000. In the past three years, 251 Israelis have been killed and over 1,500 wounded in attacks by Hamas terrorists.

In recent weeks Sharon, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, and Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Moshe Ya'alon have declared that Israel will continue targeting Hamas.

Last week Mofaz said Israel will continue to operate aggressively against Hamas in the Gaza Strip and in Judea and Samaria. The option of a large-scale military offensive in the Gaza Strip exists and the plans for it are ready, Mofaz said.

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