Avnery on assassination of Sheikh Yassin
Uri Avnery | 22.03.2004 13:00
"This is worse than a crime, it is an act of stupidity!" commented Gush
Shalom activist Uri Avnery on the assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.
Shalom activist Uri Avnery on the assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.
"This is the beginning of a new chapter of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. It moves the conflict from the level of a solvable national conflict
to the level of religious conflict, which by its very nature is insoluble.
"The fate of the State of Israel is now in the hands of group of persons
whose outlook is primitive and whose perceptions are retarded. They are
incapable of understanding the mental, emotional and political dimensions
of the conflict. This is a group of bankrupt political and military leaders
who have failed in all their actions. They try to cover up their failures by a
catastrophic escalation.
"This act will not only endanger the personal security of every Israeli,
both in the country and around the world, but also the existential security
of the State of Israel. It has grievously hurt the chances of putting and end
to the Israeli-Palestinian, Israeli-Arab and Israeli-Muslim conflicts."
Avnery mentioned that in the early 1980s the occupation authorities
encouraged the founders of Hamas, hoping that they would create a
counter-weight to Yasser Arafat and the PLO. Even after the start of the
first intifada, the army and the security services gave preferential treatment
of Hamas. Sheikh Yassin was arrested only a year after the outbreak.
"There seems to be no limit to the stupidity of our political and military
leaders. They endanger the future of the State of Israel."
~~~~~~~~~~~
conflict. It moves the conflict from the level of a solvable national conflict
to the level of religious conflict, which by its very nature is insoluble.
"The fate of the State of Israel is now in the hands of group of persons
whose outlook is primitive and whose perceptions are retarded. They are
incapable of understanding the mental, emotional and political dimensions
of the conflict. This is a group of bankrupt political and military leaders
who have failed in all their actions. They try to cover up their failures by a
catastrophic escalation.
"This act will not only endanger the personal security of every Israeli,
both in the country and around the world, but also the existential security
of the State of Israel. It has grievously hurt the chances of putting and end
to the Israeli-Palestinian, Israeli-Arab and Israeli-Muslim conflicts."
Avnery mentioned that in the early 1980s the occupation authorities
encouraged the founders of Hamas, hoping that they would create a
counter-weight to Yasser Arafat and the PLO. Even after the start of the
first intifada, the army and the security services gave preferential treatment
of Hamas. Sheikh Yassin was arrested only a year after the outbreak.
"There seems to be no limit to the stupidity of our political and military
leaders. They endanger the future of the State of Israel."
~~~~~~~~~~~
Uri Avnery
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Yassin - No Hero
22.03.2004 13:15
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Israel Assassinates Hamas Spiritual Leader
Additional Reporting By Mustafa El-Sawwaf, IOL Correspondent
GAZA CITY, March 22 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) Israeli occupation forces, given a green light from Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, assassinated in the small hours of Monday, March 22, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder and spiritual leader of the Palestinian resistance group Hamas, triggering an immediate outcry across occupied Palestine.
Backed by U.S.-made F16s jet fighters, an Israeli strike helicopter fired three missiles at crippled Yassin and his entourage while in their way back home following the dawn prayers, IslamOnline.net correspondent says.
“Sheikh Yassin was dead when he came to hospital,” Gomaa El-Saqa, a doctor at El-Shifaa hospital in Gaza, told IOL.
Nine Palestinians, including seven of Yassin's bodyguards, were also killed in the monstrous raid, which also injured two sons of the veteran resistance leader.
Ambulances and fire trucks raced to the scene, sirens wailing and rescue workers were gathering up parts of the shattered bodies.
Palestinian hospital sources said 15 people were wounded in the strike.
Salah Amudi, 30, said he and a first aid nurse had picked up Yassin's remains from the ground and took them to the hospital in plastic bags.
"I was also at the mosque praying. Upon leaving, I heard a first missile, then a second and third," he told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Yassin's head was cut in two by the blast and part of his brain had fallen out, medics and an AFP reporter said.
Under Sharon's Supervision
Sharon oversaw the entire operation, receiving constant updates from military officials at his Negev ranch, Israeli daily Haaretz reported.
It said the Israeli security cabinet took the decision to assassinate Yassin following the March 14 double bombing at the Ashdod port in which 10 Israelis were killed.
Israeli troops went on heightened alert at roadblocks and in the occupied Palestinian territories after the crime.
All border crossings into Israel were closed to Palestinians and a closure was clamped on the territories. The police also went on alert inside Israel, fearing reprisals.
Yassin was by far the most senior Palestinian resistance symbol killed in more than three years after the eruption of the second Palestinian Intifada against the Israeli occupation.
Announcing Yassin's death, the Hamas leadership said, "Sharon has opened the gates of hell and nothing will stop us from cutting off his head."
The aging spiritual leader of Hamas has been the target of numerous Israeli assassination attempts.
On September 6, an Israeli F-16 fighter jet fired several missiles at a three-story building at Al-Rimal downtown neighborhood in Gaza City where Sheikh Yassin was but he survived with just a small wound to his hand.
Palestinians On Edge
The heinous Israeli crime triggered a spontaneous Palestinian rallies throughout the occupied territories as droves of Palestinians took part in paying last respects to Yassin.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians took to the streets of West Bank cities, vowing to avenge the killing of 66-year-old Yassin.
The town of Jenin was the first to massively pay homage to Yassin, killed when Israeli helicopters fired missiles as he was leaving a mosque after dawn prayers.
A sea of wailing and shouting Palestinians gathered in a spontaneous march through the narrow streets of the city, carrying flags to the colors of Hamas as well as Islamic Jihad, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and Palestine.
"The first reaction to this assassination will come from Jenin," vowed Zakaria Al-Zubeidi, the local leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.
Among the crowd was a group of gun-toting fighters, some of them wearing empty suicide belts.
"This is the beginning of a new era. Sharon has started a new war against the Palestinian people and we are ready to fight him," Zubeidi shouted through a loudspeaker.
'New Intifada'
In Nablus, the largest city in the West Bank, some 8,000 Palestinians have already gathered in the town centre to mourn the historical figure of Hamas and vent their anger at Israel.
As they fired salvos in the air to the cheers of the swelling crowd, one of the marchers shouted through a loudspeaker that Sheikh Yassin's assassination marked a new stage in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"A new Intifada is born today," he proclaimed. "By Allah, we swear that the reprisals will come soon in the heart of Israel."
All the shops were closed and schoolchildren did not show up as mosques throughout the city were blaring out verses from the Qur'an.
Palestinian President Yasser Arafat declared three days of mourning and the Palestinian flag above his office in the Ramallah "Muqataa" headquarters was flying at half-mast.
Some 2,000 Palestinians vowing bloody revenge headed towards Arafat's compound, urging the Palestinian leader to stop all peace talks with Israel and calling on Ezzudin Al-Qassam to swiftly strike back at Israel.
Thousands of Palestinians also poured onto the streets of Gaza City after the city's mosques announced the death of Yassin in unison at 5:20 a.m. (0320 GMT), five minutes after the assassination.
"It is a catastrophe, a tragedy. I can't believe Sheikh Yassin was assassinated," 45-year-old accountant Abu Abdullah Nadeem told AFP.
He was speaking outside Al-Shifaa hospital where an ever-growing crowd of Palestinian bystanders had gathered, stunned by the news.
"If they (Israel) killed a symbol, they won't manage to kill the whole Palestinian people," said Khaled, 42, joining a dense crowd that was marching towards Sheikh Yassin's house.
"Sheikh Yassin was not only a symbol for the Palestinian people, but for the Muslim community worldwide. Even if they killed Sheikh Yassin, he will stay in our heart," he added.
Amjad Arafat was locking his sweets shop for the day.
"This is a devastating news. Sheikh Yassin was a symbol, a teacher. He loved people. His assassination will unleash a series of operations against Israel," he said.
Firing At Protestors
In the Gaza Strip city of Khan Yunis, Israeli troops opened fire at demonstrators, killing three people, including a 13-year-old child.
Medics named the boy as Musaab Al-Khalban and said he had been fatally hit in the head when troops opened fire from a watchtower in the nearby Jewish settlement of Ganei Tal.
A Palestinian journalist was shot dead by Israeli troops in a refugee camp on the outskirts of Nablus Monday while covering protests against the killing of Sheikh Yassin, medical sources said.
Mohammed Abu Halima, 22, was hit in the stomach after troops opened fire in the Balataa refugee camp. He was taken to hospital in Nablus where he died of his injuries.
He had working for the Al-Najah radio station, based in the northern West Bank city's university.
In the southern West Bank, four Palestinians were wounded when clashes broke out with the Israeli occupation troops near Bethlehem, Palestinian security sources said.
A loud explosion echoed on the Palestinian side of the main Erez crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip on Monday, Aljazeera said.
Also following the assassination, a Palestinian man attacked with an axe three Israelis in the West Bank.
Sheikh Yassin was born in the village of Al-Joura south of the Gaza Strip in 1938.
Yassin's emblematic image is ubiquitous throughout the Gaza Strip, and adorns Israeli prison cells of many Palestinians.
He frequently said Hamas was willing to stop its operations if Israel ended the occupation of Palestinian territories and stopped killing Palestinian women, children and innocent civilians.
________________________________
Frail foe of Israel
Monday 22 March 2004 - Aljazeera + Agencies
The ailing shaikh was an emblem of Palestinian resistance
Shaikh Ahmad Yasin, who was assassinated today in Gaza, was the enigmatic founder and spiritual leader of Palestine's Hamas movement.
Confined to a wheelchair since his teens when he lost the use of his legs in an accident while playing football in Gaza's Shati refugee camp, Yasin's emblematic image is ubiquitous throughout the Gaza Strip, and adorns the prison cells of many resistance fighters held by Israel.
He had frequently said Hamas would only stop its bombing campaign if the Israeli army stopped "killing Palestinian women, children and innocent civilians".
Expelled from home
The diminutive and bearded Yasin, who was always seen wearing the traditional white skullcap, founded the movement at the start of the first Palestinian Intifada, or uprising (1987-1993) when he was a Gaza-based leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, a religious and political organisation founded in Egypt in the 1920s, with wide support across the Arab world.
"The Jewish people have drunk from the glass of suffering and lived dispersed around the world. Today this people wants to force the Palestinian people to drink from the same glass"
Shaik Ahmad Yasin, Hamas founder and spiritual leader
Owner of a distinctive high-pitched voice, Yasin needed help in all daily activities and suffered from muscular deterioration, chronic breathing problems and hearing loss.
Father to 11 children, the elderly shaikh belongs to one of many Palestinian families expelled from their homes in what is today Israel during the first Israeli-Arab war in 1948.
Shaikh Yasin was born in 1936 in Majdal near the coastal town of Askalan, but fled to Gaza with his family after the village was destroyed in 1948.
Despite his paralysis, after completing secondary school Yasin left for Cairo, where he spent a year studying at Ain Shams University.
A lack of money forced him to cut short his studies and return home, but his year in Cairo was to prove decisive since it was there that he became involved with the Muslim Brotherhood.
Encouraged by Israel
Back in Gaza, Yasin founded his own movement, al-Mujama al-Islami, in the 1970s and began recruiting young activists.
At the time, Israel tacitly encouraged the growth of Islamist opposition groups in Gaza as a counterweight to the secular militancy of Yasir Arafat's revolutionary Fatah movement.
Hamas was allowed to open mosques, hospitals, and libraries among other philanthropic work. The movement was used by the Israelis to discredit Arafat’s leadership which was in exile in Tunisia at the time.
Caught up in the fervour of the 1979 Iranian revolution, Yasin set up a more radical movement - Majd al-Mujahidin.
He was arrested a first time in 1984 for illegal possession of weapons and explosives, but released a year later after which he set to work creating Hamas, an acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement.
Palestinian boys pray in front of Hamas graffiti in Gaza city
Since its inception in December 1987, Hamas has carried out the majority of attacks against Israeli targets, and become the Zionist state's most formidable enemy.
Hamas does not regard its struggle as “one of borders” because according to the group, “the Jews have no place in Palestine”.
It does not recognise Israel’s right to exist and its long-term aim is to establish an Islamic state on pre-1948 borders.
But it has set its goal, at least for now, on a complete Israeli pullout from territories occupied during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.
Recently it had expressed a willingness to suspend resistance if Israel pulled out of the West Bank and Gaza and allowed the Palestinians their own state in the illegally occupied territories.
The glass of suffering
Hamas has been a staunch opponent of the 1993 Oslo peace accords between Israel and the Palestinians an agreement which recognised Israel’s existence and paved the way for Arafat’s return from exile to oversee Palestinian self-rule in areas of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Arrested again in 1989, Yasin listened impassively as an Israeli court sentenced him to life in prison.
"The Jewish people have drunk from the glass of suffering and lived dispersed around the world. Today this people wants to force the Palestinian people to drink from the same glass," Yasin said in response.
"History will not pardon you and God will judge us all," he said.
He was released and deported to Jordan in 1997 in a deal brokered by the late Jordanian monarch, King Husayn, following a botched assassination attempt by the Israeli secret service Mossad against Khalid Mishal, a Hamas leader in Amman.
Shortly afterwards, Israel allowed the ailing cleric to return to Gaza.
Since then, Shaikh Yasin had an up-and-down relationship with Arafat's Palestinian Authority which has placed him under house arrest several times.
mm
Ding dong the witch is dead
22.03.2004 14:56
Michael Caine
havoc
22.03.2004 18:11
Dismayed