Israeli Assassination of Hamas Leader will only lead to further Bloodshed and Acts of Revenge by UN News / ABC News / The Age 9:15am 23rd Mar, 2004   22 March 2004 (UN News)    United Nations officials today strongly condemned Israel's killing of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmad Yassin in a move which also resulted in the deaths of eight others, with Secretary-General Kofi Annan warning that intensified clashes could ensue.    Mr. Annan "is concerned that such an action would lead to further bloodshed and death and acts of revenge and retaliation," a UN spokesman said in a statement.    "He reiterates that extrajudicial killings are against international law and calls on the Government of Israel to immediately end this practice," spokesman Fred Eckhard added. "The only way to halt an escalation in the violence is for the parties to work towards a viable negotiating process aimed at a just, lasting and comprehensive settlement."    Speaking directly to the press earlier this morning, Mr. Annan said, "I do condemn the targeted assassination of Sheikh Yassin and the others who died with him. Such actions are not only contrary to international law, but they do not do anything to help the search for a peaceful solution."    He also appealed to "all in the region to remain calm and avoid any further escalation in tensions."    With the diplomatic Quartet of the UN, European Union, Russian Federation and United States meeting today in Cairo, the Secretary-General said the assassination "has complicated issues." He added that he spoke this morning to his envoy, Terje Roed-Larsen, who is in Egypt with the other representatives, and they were assessing the impact of the latest actions.    "As I have indicated earlier, it doesn't really facilitate the task of peacemakers," Mr. Annan said.    Mr. Roed-Larsen himself also issued a statement strongly condemning Israel's action. "In addition to the killing of so many, the assassination of Ahmad Yassin threatens the tenuous steps currently underway to revive the peace process," he said.    "Only a viable peace process can bring about a halt to violence," stressed Mr. Roed-Larsen, the UN's Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process.    Also reacting to the latest developments, the Acting UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Bertrand Ramcharan, expressed deep concern over Israel's continued use of assassination in the occupied Palestinian territory. In a statement issued in Geneva, Mr. Ramcharan said that while there is no doubt that Israel has a right to defend itself, this must be done within the rule of law.    March 24, 2004    "Taking out Yassin no way to end war" by Paul McGeough.(The Age)    Here in Baghdad, we've all be waiting for something to happen - the inevitable next bombing as postwar Iraq deals with the first anniversary of the US-led invasion. But when the attack came, it was from the Israelis in Gaza - the crippled Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was dead and Arabs had a new martyr.    As they have done since September 11, 2001, Israeli officials defended the strike in the rhetoric of US President George Bush's war on terror, comparing Yassin to Osama bin Laden. But just as the lessons of the war on terror are not learnt in Washington, neither have they been understood in Israel - the US is so distracted by its war in Iraq that terrorists have run amok, striking more often around the world in the past year than in the preceding 12 months.    The number of Palestinian strikes on Israelis has fluctuated over the years, but four years of Israel's targeted assassinations and being allowed an increasingly free hand by Washington have failed to halt the bloodshed.    The death of Yassin will be very satisfying for some Israelis. But if the plan is to end combat and find peace, it's a major setback - because taking out the Palestinian leadership does not end the war.    Like Israel's deliberate campaign to weaken Yasser Arafat, Yassin's execution will do to the Palestinians what the war on terror has done to al-Qaeda - fracture the leadership, leaving angered and autonomous cells to exact revenge, competing with each other for greater body counts as their leaders compete to fill the power vacuum.    Some Israeli counter-terrorism experts, such as Reuven Paz, were rude enough to puncture the mood of celebration with warnings that Hamas's military leadership is in Damascus and Beirut and that its operational side remains intact: "I think that its ability to recover, with the help of the massive support it will now receive from the Palestinian street, will be very quick."    It's easy - and dangerous - to dismiss the outpouring of Arab rhetoric in the wake of Yassin's death as more of the same. Hamas has consistently confined itself to the struggle against Israel, refusing to take on other Muslim causes or to attack US targets. But this time it warned that it held Washington responsible and it issued an unprecedented appeal to "all the Muslims of the world" for reprisal attacks.    Al-Qaeda seems to have heard the call. An internet statement attributed to one of its offshoots, the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, which claims responsibility for the March 11 Madrid bombings, urged vengeance: "We call on all the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades to avenge the Sheikh of the Palestinian resistance by striking the tyrant of the century, America, and its allies."    The Yassin attack earned worldwide condemnation - except from the US, where National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice tossed it off with an uncaring "there's always the possibility of a better day in the Middle East". It was only later in the day that the State Department, increasingly sidelined in US foreign policy, piped up to declare itself "deeply troubled".    It should be. The US is still struggling for credibility in Iraq and right across the Middle East as it tries to impose democracy.    As Israeli leader Ariel Sharon has implemented his own plans to wall off the Palestinians, the US has done nothing to put its so-called "road map" peace plan in place.    The Israelis and Palestinians are so mired in historical and personal enmity that the issue will never be addressed sincerely unless Israel's old 1967 border becomes a blue line, with international forces keeping the sides apart. Then they might talk. In the meantime, expect the worst.    March 22, 2004    "Children are increasingly being used to carry out bombings in the Middle East "(Adapted from a ABC News Correspondents Report story by Mark Willacy in the Middle East).    Every day after school, Abdullah Koran would rush down to the main Israeli checkpoint which cuts Nablus off from the rest of the West Bank. There, the fourth grader would earn a bit of pocket money carrying bags for Palestinians crossing the checkpoint.But on Tuesday, he was offered a lot of cash to take one case past the soldiers.    The 11-year old explains how a man in his mid-30s gave him the bag and told him to take it to an old woman on the other side of the checkpoint. But the bag aroused the suspicions of Israeli soldier Moran Bukant. "I opened the bag and saw some wires coming out of it," Private Bukant said."So then I knew something was suspicious here. So I threw the bag to the ground and called my commander and he took care of it." Evacuating the checkpoint, Israeli army sappers took care of it by blowing it up.    Inside the bag was a bomb packed with hundreds of steel bolts, and it was rigged to explode when called by a mobile phone.    Miri Eisin is a spokeswoman for the Israeli Government and a former colonel in the country's military intelligence."We're talking about a child, an 11-and-a-half year-old, who had no idea that he was carrying a bomb from one side of a crossing to the other," she said. "And in that sense we have a new phenomenon, a new manipulation of children."    When asked the purpose of using the child, Ms Eisin replied: "We think that he was going to bring it through to somebody else to have somebody explode in Israel proper.    "But when they saw that he wasn't getting through, that he had been stopped, they definitely tried to detonate the bomb. "There was a cell phone inside - the bomb was ready to use - and there was a cell phone there that was dialled to, and miraculously it didn't go off. "So what they did here is they had both options."    Israeli investigators believe 11-year-old Abdullah Koran could have become the conflict's youngest bomber, all without his knowledge.    Mahmoud Salem and Nabil Massoud were fully aware that they were carrying out suicide bombings. The two high school students from the Gaza Strip blew themselves up at the heavily guarded Ashdod Port, killing 10 people.    At Mahmoud Salem's school in the cramped Jabaliya refugee camp, mourners came to pay their respects. The 18-year-old's psychology teacher, Mohammad Salem, explains with pride how his school has now produced five martyrs.    "We can say this school is the school of martyrs", he saied. "In fact, when we raise our children and our students we teach them the love of the struggle, the love of resistance." On Mahmoud Salem's now empty desk is a drawing of a hand grenade, above it is scrawled the words "al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades".    Ms Eisin accuses Palestinian militant groups of indoctrinating children into the cult of martyrdom. "You go anywhere in and around the schools there and you don't see signs up of political figures or of sports figures or of musicians, you see signs of, what they call "shahid" or the suicide bombers, the sacrificers," she said.    "Those are the people who are put up on the walls there on posters, that's what the kids are looking up to nowadays in the Palestinian Authority."    Mahmoud Salem's father, Zuheir, first learnt about his son's involvement in the Ashdod attacks on television.He does not feel pride, nor is he surprised. In the hopelessness of the Jabaliya refugee camp, nothing is too shocking any more. Visit the related web page
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