David Horovitz
in Jerusalem
Although Sheikh Ahmed Yassin is now insisting that he did not personally sanction the dispatch of his Hamas organisation's first female suicide bomber, who killed four Israelis in an attack on Wednesday, Israel has placed the paraplegic spiritual leader at the top of its targets for assassination, vowing to "find him in the tunnels and eliminate him."
The sheikh, who attended Friday prayers as usual in Gaza despite the Israeli threats, and who declared that he did not fear death and was "a seeker of martyrdom," nevertheless also took pains to claim that he had played no direct role in sending out a Gaza mother-of-two, Reem Al-Reyashi (22), who detonated an explosives belt at the Erez border crossing, killing three Israeli soldiers and a security guard. Israel, he said, knew full well that he had "nothing to do with military activity." In interviews immediately after the bombing, however, the sheikh had indicated he was now legitimising female suicide bombers, reversing a previous ban, praised the attack, promised more and explained the shift in policy by describing how difficult it had been proving recently for male bombers to evade Israeli security precautions.
Israel has tried to kill Sheikh Yassin before - notably in an air raid last September on an apartment block in Gaza City where the sheikh and about a dozen other Hamas political leaders, spokespeople and bomb-makers were meeting.
In the wake of Wednesday's bombing and Sheikh Yassin's threats of further such attacks, the Israeli Deputy Defence Minister, Ze'ev Boim, warned that the sheikh is now firmly "marked for death." He should hide himself "deep underground, where he won't know the difference between day and night," the Likud politician said. Yet wherever the sheikh hid himself, Mr Boim went on, Israel would find and kill him.
Sheikh Yassin yesterday ruled out any possibility of a truce with Israel - his organisation is avowedly committed to the destruction of the Jewish state - and pledged that "resistance will continue".
In a sign of unease over such policies, a group of left-wing Israelis - including some reservists from elite army units - held a demonstration yesterday at one of the crossing points into Gaza, urging soldiers not to serve there. Gaza Jewish settlers and their supporters held a counter-protest, in support of the troops.
Meanwhile, Israeli officials privately protested a decision by the International Court of Justice in The Hague to permit the Arab League to make verbal and written presentations at its hearings next month into the legality of the controversial West Bank security barrier Israel is building. The officials asserted that the decision indicated the hearings would be "political rather than legal".
Syria's President Bashar Assad is considering a twice-repeated invitation from Israel's President Moshe Katsav to meet him as a precursor to peace negotiations, the Kuwaiti al-Siasa newspaper reported yesterday.