Demonstrators Vow to Avenge Hamas Official

Tens of thousands of Palestinians marched through streets of the West Bank and Gaza City on Saturday, vowing to kill Israelis to avenge the death of the military leader of the Islamic movement Hamas, who died in an Israeli helicopter gunship attack.

Hamas threatened to exact a price from the Jewish state even before angry crowds turned out for the burials of Mahmoud Abu Hanoud and two assistants who died Friday night. The trio were killed by missiles fired at them as they drove north of Nablus.

After night fell Saturday, Palestinians fired mortar shells and rockets at Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, killing an Israeli soldier near the settlement of Kfar Darom and injuring two other soldiers. Although Palestinians have fired hundreds of mortar shells at settlements and at communities inside Israel’s pre-1967 borders since fighting began 14 months ago, this was the first time anyone was killed by one.

Israeli helicopters fired at least 20 missiles at Palestinian targets in Gaza early today, destroying a security position and wounding three people, Palestinian security officials said. Israel Radio reported that at least 20 Palestinians were injured.

The latest developments inflamed passions here on the eve of the arrival of U.S. envoys trying to halt the violence. More than 900 people, most of them Palestinians, have died since fighting erupted in late September 2000.

Former Marine Corps Gen. Anthony C. Zinni and Assistant Secretary of State William Burns will find each side blaming the other for the failure to achieve a cease-fire.

In an interview on Israeli radio Saturday, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, the leading dove in the Israeli Cabinet, described Abu Hanoud as a “professional terrorist,” and his killing as an act of self-defense.

Speaking to reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed-Rabbo said the killing was meant to torpedo the latest U.S. diplomatic effort.

Massive crowds of militants, many waving the green banners of Hamas or wearing green Hamas bandannas and firing guns into the air, accompanied Abu Hanoud’s body from the morgue in Jenin to Nablus and later to his village for burial. Tens of thousands more marched through the streets of Gaza City, also chanting for revenge.

“He was very popular among the people because his policy was clear,” said Ahmed Asedeh, 22, a Hamas supporter who attended the funeral in Nablus. “He wanted to establish a Muslim state in all of Palestine. He wanted to bring the refugees back to their homes. He is dead, but there are others who will follow him.”

Topping the Jewish state’s most-wanted list for his alleged role as the mastermind of suicide bombings and other attacks inside Israel, Abu Hanoud had become a folk hero to many Palestinians.

He escaped Israeli death squads at least twice, was wounded in one of those incidents and recovered, and lived on the run for months before the Israelis found him.

Palestinians say Israel has killed more than 70 people in targeted raids, which have been denounced by the international community.

“This killing means that Israel continues its strategy of killing all the Palestinian activists, and the Palestinian Authority does nothing to protect the Palestinians, to provide security for them,” said Hussam Khader, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council from Balata refugee camp on the outskirts of Nablus.

“The Palestinian people should change their strategy, shift to putting their internal house in order,” he said as he stood forlornly in downtown Nablus with mourners swirling around him. “There is no intifada here. There is no resistance. There is only closure and siege and killing of activists.”

The calls for revenge echoing through Saturday’s rallies underscored the dilemma Israel faces in pursuing a policy of killing top enemy commanders. Each time, it gambles that the hits will weaken the military capabilities of the Islamic organizations more than they will fuel the cycle of violence.

Each killing of a leader of Hamas or the equally radical Palestinian Islamic Jihad inspires a wave of volunteers eager to fight Israel and to kill Jews. The killings feed Palestinian anger and further radicalize the Palestinian public, which is increasingly convinced that Israel favors military might over dialogue.

If past experience is a guide, retaliation by Hanoud’s Hamas movement will be harsh and will almost certainly target Israeli civilians.

A Hamas political leader, Abdulaziz Rantisi, said Saturday that the organization had been relatively quiet in recent weeks, but that revenge is now inevitable. “The alternative is to submit to Israeli aggression and the crimes of [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon,” he said.

“This is not the first time that Hamas has lost a leader of the military wing,” Rantisi said by telephone from the Gaza Strip. “But Hamas is ready to continue to struggle and resist. There will be another Abu Hanoud, and thousands of Abu Hanouds. It is not so difficult for a movement like Hamas to find more leaders.”

Israeli officials calculate that, over time, the removal of key operatives, those having organizational and munitions expertise, and the men who dispatch them, will erode the ability of radical organizations to attack. That is what happened, they say, when Israel last killed a Hamas military leader of Abu Hanoud’s stature.

In January 1996, Israeli agents placed explosives in the mobile phone of Yehiya Ayash, known as “the Engineer,” a master bomb maker. Hamas avenged his death by launching a string of deadly bombings of Israeli buses and cafes.

But the army says that the elimination of Ayash and, later, his successor significantly weakened the organization’s ability to carry out operations for a few years.

Hitting Islamic radicals also appeases the Israeli public, which, like the Palestinians, is increasingly radicalized by the conflict. There is little public debate in Israel over the need for such killings.

Senior Israeli army commanders say their operations in the last 14 months have crimped, but not cut off, the ability of Hamas and other Islamic fundamentalists to attack.

In addition to using helicopter gunships, Israel has booby-trapped phones and cars of key Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants. It has captured militants during raids by Israeli special forces on Palestinian villages and intercepted men who Israeli authorities say were on their way to blow themselves up among crowds of Israelis.

In the effort to thwart strikes and flush out would-be attackers, the Israeli army has imposed stifling closures on Palestinian villages and towns and erected checkpoints and roadblocks.

The tactics are controversial because they punish Palestinian civilians along with suspected terrorists. More than a dozen passersby have been killed when Israeli rockets slammed into the homes, offices or cars of targeted individuals. The closures have helped cripple the Palestinian economy.

Israel says the tactics are paying off and are necessary because the Palestinian Authority rarely arrests suspects. A top Israeli army commander said in an interview last week that although Israeli forces have managed to degrade the abilities of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the recent decline in suicide bombings has been more of a matter of interception.

“We are like a tennis player on a tennis court, and on the other side is this machine that shoots tennis balls, and it shoots at you, and every time, it shoots to another place on the court,” the commander said. “You don’t see all the balls because you don’t have good intelligence. . . . So sometimes we hit . . . thin air.”

According to the Israeli army, security forces killed nine Hamas militants and arrested one between Oct. 14 and Nov. 11. The Israelis said the actions prevented eight suicide bombings, although evidence of what the men were planning is rarely presented.

There has also been a slight shift by Palestinians from bombings to shootings, which may be easier to pull off.

Hamas, according to Palestinian sources, had not staged a major attack since Sept. 11, in part because of a political decision to obey Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat’s demands for calm after the terror attacks on the U.S. and in part because attacks were getting harder to carry out.

Ziad abu Amr, a Palestinian academic who has written extensively on Islamic fundamentalism, said the loss of Abu Hanoud will undermine Hamas’ ability to plan and execute anti-Israeli operations. But, he said, it will not be a permanent handicap.

“Leaders manage to reproduce new leaders and cadres. Hamas is a broad movement, and it has many ways to acquire organizational, technical and operational skills,” said Abu Amr, who is also a member of the Palestinian legislature. “No matter how many individuals you kill, no matter how Israel upgrades its security measures, Hamas will find a way to find new leaders, new people and people willing to die.”

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Curtius reported from Nablus and Wilkinson from Jerusalem.