Chanting calls for revenge, tens of thousands of Palestinians surged through the streets of Gaza City on Monday in a mammoth funeral for Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the founder and leader of the militant group Hamas who was killed in an Israeli helicopter missile strike before dawn.
Draped in the green banner of Hamas, Yassin’s coffin was borne aloft on a sea of mourners, followed by the coffins of aides who also were killed in the Israeli strike.
Seven people died with the 67-year-old sheik in the attack, which targeted his entourage as he was escorted home in his wheelchair from a mosque. Two of his sons were among the 15 wounded.
“We pledge to continue the holy war,” Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, a top Hamas leader, said in a eulogy at the Omari mosque in central Gaza. “We swear by God to follow the path of jihad and martyrdom, which is the path of Sheik Ahmed Yassin.”
As the slain cleric was buried in the Martyrs Cemetery in Gaza’s Sheik Radwan neighborhood, his assassination set off aftershocks in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and on the volatile frontier with Lebanon.
Palestinian protesters clashed with Israeli troops in West Bank cities and in East Jerusalem. In the Gaza Strip, militants traded gunfire with Israeli forces and fired mortars and rockets at Jewish settlements and into southern Israel. At least four Palestinians, one of them a 13-year-old boy, were killed in the violence, Palestinians said.
Inside Israel, an ax-wielding Palestinian slightly wounded three people on a street in the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Gan, and an Arab with a knife injured three passengers on a bus in Jaffa.
Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon fired mortars and anti-tank rockets at Israeli army positions at the edge of the Golan Heights, and the Israelis responded with artillery fire and air strikes.
Among Israelis and Palestinians there were growing fears that the killing of the sheik, a symbol of resistance to his followers and in the Muslim world, could trigger a new phase of violent conflict after more than three years of bloodshed.
“Now we are saying to the murderers and to the terrorists: The war is opened,” al-Rantisi said. He warned Israelis of a “retaliation operation that is going to shake the heart of your entity.” Hamas has carried out suicide bombings and shooting attacks that have killed hundreds of Israelis.
Hamas threatens U.S.
A Hamas statement threatened the United States, saying the attack on Yassin could not have happened without American consent. “All the Muslims of the world will be honored to join the retaliation for this crime,” the statement said.
U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher called the killing of Yassin “deeply troubling,” adding that it would increase tensions and make it harder to pursue peace in the Middle East.
Using similar language, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said, “We are deeply troubled by this morning’s actions in Gaza.”
Foreign ministers of European Union nations said in a statement that Hamas was guilty of “atrocities . . . which have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Israelis” but added that “Israel is not . . . entitled to carry out extrajudicial killings.”
And UN Secretary General Kofi Annan strongly condemned the assassination.
“Such actions are not only contrary to international law, but they do not do anything to help the search for a peaceful solution,” Annan declared. “I appeal to all in the region to remain calm and avoid any further escalation in tensions.”
Israelis braced for revenge attacks, shunning cafes and other public places as police went on high alert. A public debate began about whether the killing of Yassin was a blow to terrorism or a provocation that would cost more Israeli lives.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said the strike targeted “an archmurderer who was one of Israel’s worst enemies.”
“The essence of this man’s ideology was one–the murder and killing of Jews, and the destruction of the state of Israel,” Sharon said. “The war against terror has not ended and will continue daily, everywhere.”
`Israel’s bin Laden’
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz called Yassin “Israel’s bin Laden” whose “hands are stained with the blood of Israeli children.”
But Interior Minister Avraham Poraz, who opposed the strike on Yassin, warned that it could backfire.
“I’m very concerned that we have begun some kind of cycle here, and that we will pay a very heavy price,” Poraz said.
Shimon Peres, the leader of the opposition Labor Party, said that if he were a Cabinet member, he too would have opposed the lethal strike.
“I don’t believe that by liquidating leaders we will liquidate terror,” Peres said. “Terror can be liquidated by liquidating the reasons for terror, not the leaders. If we kill one leader, another will take his place.”
In Gaza, mourners at the sheik’s funeral vowed to avenge his death with more lethal attacks on Israel. “Sharon, prepare your body bags,” they chanted, as flags of Palestinian factions fluttered above the procession.
Pointing a finger skyward to indicate one God, hundreds roared in response to exhortations that boomed out of a sound truck: “Your God is Allah, your model is his messenger [the Prophet Muhammad], your constitution is the Koran, your path is holy war, and your dearest wish is martyrdom for the sake of God!”
Many people reached out to touch Yassin’s coffin as it was carried through the streets and down Gaza’s main boulevard. People watched from balconies and rooftops.
Scores of armed and masked men joined the procession.
“The response to this cowardly operation will not be condemnation,” one gunman said. “Our actions will speak instead of words.”
At the spot where Yassin was killed, a hole left by a missile punctured the street and shrapnel peppered shop shutters. The sheik’s mangled wheelchair had been removed, along with the bloodstains and shoes that had been scattered on the street after the attack.
Response to suicide bombing
The strike was part of a new campaign against Hamas ordered by the Israeli government in response to a double suicide bombing last week at the port of Ashdod that killed 10 Israelis.
Israeli officials have said that a key aim of the campaign is to show Palestinian militants that an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, recently proposed by Sharon, would not be a retreat under fire and could not be claimed as a victory by the armed groups.
Yet the killing of Yassin seemed to have the immediate effect of boosting support for Hamas and weakening the Palestinian Authority.
“This funeral is a referendum for any elections the Palestinian Authority may have,” said Ali Hassan, 50 a shoe store owner sympathetic to Hamas.
Abu Adib, a member of Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a militant offshoot of Yasser Arafat’s mainstream Fatah movement, predicted that retaliation for Yassin’s death would be “like an earthquake.”
“The sheik was not just from Hamas,” he said. “He represented all of Palestine. Today we are all the same.”
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Yassin drawn to militant Islam at an early age
1936
Sheik Ahmed Yassin is born in what today is the Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon. As a child he is paralyzed in a sporting accident.
1948
During the war over the founding of the state of Israel, Yassin’s family moves to a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip.
1955
Yassin joins the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic political and social movement.
1957
After training as a teacher in Cairo, he returns to Gaza to teach and preach.
1964-65
Yassin returns to Cairo to attend college but is expelled from Egypt for his membership in the Brotherhood.
1973
Yassin founds the Islamic Charitable League, a Gaza organization that runs health, education and religious programs.
1983
Yassin is arrested after the discovery of an arms cache linked to his organization and is sentenced to 13 years in an Israeli prison. He is released in 1985 as part of a prisoner swap.
1987
During the first Palestinian intifada, Yassin forms Hamas as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. The group’s name means “zeal” and is an Arabic
acronym for Islamic Resistance Movement. It advocates the destruction of Israel and the establishment of an Islamic Palestinian state.
1989
Yassin is arrested and sentenced to life in prison for ordering the killing of three Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel.
1997
Israel frees Yassin in exchange for Jordan’s release of two Israeli agents involved in attempting to kill a Hamas leader.
September 2003
Yassin escapes an Israeli bombing of a Hamas member’s house in Gaza.
March 22, 2004
Yassin is killed by an Israeli missile strike outside a Gaza mosque.
Sources: Associated Press, BBC, Washington post, Palestine Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs
Chicago Tribune
