Slaying of Hamas leader triggers vows of revenge

GAZA – The slaying of Sheik Ahmed Yassin by Israel has prompted massive protests in Gaza and the West Bank.

At least 200 000 Palestinians, many weeping, flooded Gaza’s streets yesterday to join a funeral march for Hamas militant leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, slain in an Israeli missile strike after his dawn prayers. In the biggest public outpouring of grief Gazans could remember, mourners walked three kilometres to Yassin’s final resting place in the Martyrs Cemetery of Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, a seething Islamist stronghold.”I cried today as I never cry.I do not recall crying so much when I lost my own father.I believe a black future awaits this region,” said 35-year-old Gaza City taxi driver Ayman Oman.Yassin (67), a wheelchair-bound cleric who was a folk hero among Palestinians displaced and impoverished by conflict with Israel, and seven others were killed by three missiles fired at his entourage after it emerged from a mosque.Arab leaders condemned the assassination and predicted a new wave of violence in the Middle East.Angry Arabs and Palestinians in exile called for revenge and blamed the United States for its pro-Israeli policies.Syrian President Bashar al-Assad called the killing “an ugly crime” and an official Syrian statement said it was “the climax of the terror that Israel practises continuously”.King Abdullah of Jordan, which has a peace treaty with Israel, said: “This crime will only lead to more escalation, violence and instability in the region.”President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, the biggest recipient of US aid in the Arab world after Iraq, condemned the assassination as a savage act which killed off peace prospects.”With this act we have aborted the peace process today.It will have big effects on the region,” he told reporters.From North Africa, King Mohammed of Morocco and Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika sent messages to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat condemning the Israeli operation.Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Libya also joined the chorus of protest.Mohamed Mahdi Akef, leader of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, called it “an unforgivable crime” and said the Palestinians should not lay down their arms because violence was the only language Israel understood.”We will not rest, we will not sleep until the last Zionist leaves our territory,” Akef told Reuters.The influential Brotherhood shares the Islamist views of Hamas.The head of Lebanon’s Hizbollah guerrillas said Israel would pay the highest price yet for Yassin’s assassination.”The Zionists will discover soon that they have committed a very big folly, to add to their series of previous follies,” said Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah.He said Yassin’s death would have ramifications “more important and dangerous than all that this cancerous entity (Israel) has witnessed until now”.PLEA FOR TALKSEgypt backed out of plans to send officials to Israel to mark the 25th anniversary of their peace treaty on March 26.But Mubarak also called for a return to direct talks between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority.Lebanese President Emile Lahoud said Israel was mistaken if it thought violence could suppress the will of the Palestinians.”Assassinating any symbol cannot kill (their) rights but will increase the resistance… Israel will find the same fate in the occupied territories as it found in south Lebanon,” he said.Kuwaiti Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah Ahmad al-Sabah told reporters: “This will only serve to foment violence because violence begets violence.”The head of Jordan’s Islamic Action Front, Hamze Mansour, said Israel had “opened the gates of hell”.In Tehran, Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei said that after killing Yassin Israel was “doomed to extinction”.’BUSH GUILTY’Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, a top Shi’ite Muslim cleric, said in Beirut that US President George W. Bush was as guilty as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.”President Bush was the one who gave the green light to the criminal Zionists to continue the assassination operations against the Palestinians using the most advanced American weapons,” Fadlallah said.In Jordan thousands of Jordanians and Palestinians filled the streets of central Amman, urging the government to close down Israel’s embassy and expel its ambassador.The protesters, who included ministers and deputies, waved Palestinian flags, raised pictures of Yassin and criticised Arab governments for failing to back the Palestinians.”We have had enough of Arab summits, they lead nowhere.We want rifles and human bombs,” protester Hadia Sharqawi said.Shops and schools closed in north Lebanon’s Palestinian refugee camps and residents took to the streets to vent their anger and vow revenge.Thousands of Palestinians also protested at al-Yarmouk camp near Damascus after holding a symbolic funeral prayer.They chanted slogans against Israel, the United States and Arab governments allied with Washington.Students held mass demonstrations in Cairo but stayed within the confines of their campuses to avoid confrontation with riot police, who deployed in force as a precaution.Ordinary people across the Arab world reacted with outrage to the killing.”Israel is carrying out terrorism and the world is just watching.Now, more than Ahmed Yassin will come out against Israel — and they won’t be in wheelchairs,” said Saudi bank employee Mubarak Nasser.GAZA GRIEFIn Gaza, hundreds of armed, masked militants from the grassroots Islamic movement and other factions including the mainstream Fatah of President Yasser Arafat took part in the funeral train.The funeral was the biggest show of support for Arafat since his triumphant entry into Gaza in 1994, at the start of a period of relative peace between Israel and the Palestinians.”Farewell, Sheikh Yassin, you who are the best and most honest leader,” cried a woman seated on a street corner as Yassin’s body was carried by on the shoulders of Hamas men to the cemetery.Just a week ago Yassin told Reuters, “When a Hamas leader is killed, a hundred other leaders arise.”Vows of revenge on Israel filled the air above the march and were spelt out in fresh graffiti coating the facades of a football stadium where a traditional green Muslim mourning tent was set up for Yassin’s relatives to gather after his burial.”The assassination of the Hamas leader Yassin amounts to a decision to execute hundreds of Zionists (in reprisal),” trumpeted the graffiti as thousands of Palestinians squeezed by into the stadium to extend their condolences.The queue stretched around a block as strident Islamic music boomed from loudspeakers lining the stadium pitch.Those paying their last respects included assault rifle-toting militants and clerics in traditional robes.Some mourners sat in stony silence on plastic chairs.Marchers from the al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, part of Fatah, also swore to avenge the killing of Yassin, calling him “the symbol of Palestinian jihad (holy struggle) and resistance”.Israel stepped up “track and kill” operations against Hamas leaders after suicide bombers killed 10 people in a major port last week in an unprecedented attack that unnerved Israelis.Hamas, sworn to destroy Israel, has been behind attacks that killed scores of Israelis during three-and-a-half years of open conflict and more during a period of interim peace before that.”Today is the beginning of the new Intifada (uprising),” said a civil servant named Ahmed.Yassin did not go underground, unlike many comrades and despite an Israeli attempt to kill him in September, aides said.He kept up his routine of attending morning prayers at the Islamic Compound mosque, which he founded and where he preached holy war against the Jewish state.In ramshackle Sabra, some of Yassin’s neighbours fainted at the sight of his smashed and bloodied wheelchair.Many Gazans wept openly.Shopkeepers closed down and schools sent pupils home.- Nampa-ReutersIn the biggest public outpouring of grief Gazans could remember, mourners walked three kilometres to Yassin’s final resting place in the Martyrs Cemetery of Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, a seething Islamist stronghold.”I cried today as I never cry.I do
not recall crying so much when I lost my own father.I believe a black future awaits this region,” said 35-year-old Gaza City taxi driver Ayman Oman.Yassin (67), a wheelchair-bound cleric who was a folk hero among Palestinians displaced and impoverished by conflict with Israel, and seven others were killed by three missiles fired at his entourage after it emerged from a mosque.Arab leaders condemned the assassination and predicted a new wave of violence in the Middle East.Angry Arabs and Palestinians in exile called for revenge and blamed the United States for its pro-Israeli policies.Syrian President Bashar al-Assad called the killing “an ugly crime” and an official Syrian statement said it was “the climax of the terror that Israel practises continuously”.King Abdullah of Jordan, which has a peace treaty with Israel, said: “This crime will only lead to more escalation, violence and instability in the region.”President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, the biggest recipient of US aid in the Arab world after Iraq, condemned the assassination as a savage act which killed off peace prospects.”With this act we have aborted the peace process today.It will have big effects on the region,” he told reporters.From North Africa, King Mohammed of Morocco and Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika sent messages to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat condemning the Israeli operation.Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Libya also joined the chorus of protest.Mohamed Mahdi Akef, leader of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, called it “an unforgivable crime” and said the Palestinians should not lay down their arms because violence was the only language Israel understood.”We will not rest, we will not sleep until the last Zionist leaves our territory,” Akef told Reuters.The influential Brotherhood shares the Islamist views of Hamas.The head of Lebanon’s Hizbollah guerrillas said Israel would pay the highest price yet for Yassin’s assassination.”The Zionists will discover soon that they have committed a very big folly, to add to their series of previous follies,” said Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah.He said Yassin’s death would have ramifications “more important and dangerous than all that this cancerous entity (Israel) has witnessed until now”.PLEA FOR TALKSEgypt backed out of plans to send officials to Israel to mark the 25th anniversary of their peace treaty on March 26.But Mubarak also called for a return to direct talks between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority.Lebanese President Emile Lahoud said Israel was mistaken if it thought violence could suppress the will of the Palestinians.”Assassinating any symbol cannot kill (their) rights but will increase the resistance… Israel will find the same fate in the occupied territories as it found in south Lebanon,” he said.Kuwaiti Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah Ahmad al-Sabah told reporters: “This will only serve to foment violence because violence begets violence.”The head of Jordan’s Islamic Action Front, Hamze Mansour, said Israel had “opened the gates of hell”.In Tehran, Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei said that after killing Yassin Israel was “doomed to extinction”.’BUSH GUILTY’Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, a top Shi’ite Muslim cleric, said in Beirut that US President George W. Bush was as guilty as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.”President Bush was the one who gave the green light to the criminal Zionists to continue the assassination operations against the Palestinians using the most advanced American weapons,” Fadlallah said.In Jordan thousands of Jordanians and Palestinians filled the streets of central Amman, urging the government to close down Israel’s embassy and expel its ambassador.The protesters, who included ministers and deputies, waved Palestinian flags, raised pictures of Yassin and criticised Arab governments for failing to back the Palestinians.”We have had enough of Arab summits, they lead nowhere.We want rifles and human bombs,” protester Hadia Sharqawi said.Shops and schools closed in north Lebanon’s Palestinian refugee camps and residents took to the streets to vent their anger and vow revenge.Thousands of Palestinians also protested at al-Yarmouk camp near Damascus after holding a symbolic funeral prayer.They chanted slogans against Israel, the United States and Arab governments allied with Washington.Students held mass demonstrations in Cairo but stayed within the confines of their campuses to avoid confrontation with riot police, who deployed in force as a precaution.Ordinary people across the Arab world reacted with outrage to the killing.”Israel is carrying out terrorism and the world is just watching.Now, more than Ahmed Yassin will come out against Israel — and they won’t be in wheelchairs,” said Saudi bank employee Mubarak Nasser.GAZA GRIEFIn Gaza, hundreds of armed, masked militants from the grassroots Islamic movement and other factions including the mainstream Fatah of President Yasser Arafat took part in the funeral train.The funeral was the biggest show of support for Arafat since his triumphant entry into Gaza in 1994, at the start of a period of relative peace between Israel and the Palestinians.”Farewell, Sheikh Yassin, you who are the best and most honest leader,” cried a woman seated on a street corner as Yassin’s body was carried by on the shoulders of Hamas men to the cemetery.Just a week ago Yassin told Reuters, “When a Hamas leader is killed, a hundred other leaders arise.”Vows of revenge on Israel filled the air above the march and were spelt out in fresh graffiti coating the facades of a football stadium where a traditional green Muslim mourning tent was set up for Yassin’s relatives to gather after his burial.”The assassination of the Hamas leader Yassin amounts to a decision to execute hundreds of Zionists (in reprisal),” trumpeted the graffiti as thousands of Palestinians squeezed by into the stadium to extend their condolences.The queue stretched around a block as strident Islamic music boomed from loudspeakers lining the stadium pitch.Those paying their last respects included assault rifle-toting militants and clerics in traditional robes.Some mourners sat in stony silence on plastic chairs.Marchers from the al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, part of Fatah, also swore to avenge the killing of Yassin, calling him “the symbol of Palestinian jihad (holy struggle) and resistance”.Israel stepped up “track and kill” operations against Hamas leaders after suicide bombers killed 10 people in a major port last week in an unprecedented attack that unnerved Israelis.Hamas, sworn to destroy Israel, has been behind attacks that killed scores of Israelis during three-and-a-half years of open conflict and more during a period of interim peace before that.”Today is the beginning of the new Intifada (uprising),” said a civil servant named Ahmed.Yassin did not go underground, unlike many comrades and despite an Israeli attempt to kill him in September, aides said.He kept up his routine of attending morning prayers at the Islamic Compound mosque, which he founded and where he preached holy war against the Jewish state.In ramshackle Sabra, some of Yassin’s neighbours fainted at the sight of his smashed and bloodied wheelchair.Many Gazans wept openly.Shopkeepers closed down and schools sent pupils home.- Nampa-Reuters