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Israel Assassinates Palestinian Leader in Missile Raid
RAMALLAH, West Bank, Aug 27 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - In the highest-level assassination by Israel since the Palestinian
Intifada (uprising) erupted 11 months ago, the head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Abu Ali Mustafa, was killed in an Israeli missile attack on his office in the West Bank Monday.
Palestinian security officials told news agencies that three other Palestinians were injured in the raid in Ramallah, not far from the offices of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.
Two projectiles hit the building, Agence France-Presse (AFP) quoted Palestinian officials as saying, adding that it was unclear whether they were fired by helicopter gun-ships or from ground troops.
Mustafa had succeeded George Habash as the head of the PFLP, one of the main resistance movements in occupied Palestine.
Mustafa - whose real name was Mustafa Zibri - was in his early 60s and had been secretary general of the PFLP for just under two years. He was one of the founders of the movement established in 1967, according to the BBC online service.
In Gaza, President Arafat's aide, Nabil Abu Rudeina, told AFP that Israel had "crossed all red lines" by assassinating the head of the PFLP.
"This is a dangerous stage in the Israeli aggression; it has crossed all red lines," said Abu Rudeina. "It's a new crime that Israel is committing, exploiting U.S. silence and irresponsible American declarations."
Meanwhile, in Damascus, Maher Taher - a member of the PFLP political directorate - said Israel's assassination of the PFLP head "will not go unpunished," AFP reported.
"The blood of Abu Ali Mustafa is very precious.... We will respond to this crime in a bigger way. Israel will pay a heavy price for its crime," BBC quoted Taher as saying.
In another serious Israeli escalation, Israel's U.S.-made Apache helicopters went into action yet again late Sunday, blasting a Palestinian police station in the West Bank and undermining once again the prospect of truce talks, AFP added.
A weekend of Israeli military escalations left 11 people dead in a series of deadly attacks in which Israel used fighter-bombers, tanks and troops to level several police stations across the Gaza Strip and West Bank.
In the latest attack, two helicopters destroyed a two-story Palestinian police building in Tulkarem in the West Bank on Sunday night, AFP reported.
Earlier on Sunday, Palestinian activists shot an Israeli settler in the north of the country, near the autonomous town of Tulkarem.
Meanwhile, a Palestinian fisherman, Khalil Zeid, 60, was badly wounded by a shot to the head fired from Israeli boats, which opened fire at his vessel in the waters off El Sudanyeh, north of Gaza City, Palestinian officials said, AFP reported.
According to Western figures, the death toll of 11 months of Palestinian resistance rose late Sunday to 745, including 570 Palestinians and 152 Israelis.
Early Sunday, Israel sent U.S.-made F-16 fighter-bombers to destroy Palestinian police stations in Deir Al Balah in the Gaza Strip and in Salfit in the West Bank.
A correspondent for the British daily, The Independent, said, "the air raid was clinically executed, and almost ritualistic punishment, designed to intimidate the Palestinians by providing them with another example of Israel's massive military superiority."
The air raids, which injured eight Palestinian civilians, swiftly followed a major incursion into the Gaza Strip by Israeli tanks and troops where they razed several other police buildings, supposedly in retaliation for a Palestinian commando raid on an army outpost that killed three soldiers.
One Palestinian policeman was killed and three others were injured in the fierce battle to repel the tanks, which rolled two-kilometers (1.2 miles) into Palestinian-controlled territory.
Arafat toured the ruins of a police base in Rafah on Sunday, reiterating pleas to the international community to send observers despite Israeli and U.S. rejection.
"It is his [U.S. President, George W. Bush's] duty to send international observers with the briefest delay," Arafat was quoted as saying.
But, Bush turned a deaf ear to Arafat's pleas, merely saying on Friday that Arafat must do more to curb the violence before peace talks can resume.
The Independent said, "The United States has played an important role in creating the conditions in which it is now possible for Israel to deploy F-16s without incurring an international backlash.
"The message that has been emanating from George Bush, the U.S. president, while on holiday is that he does not want to get involved in a conflict that can only lose him votes, and that he will not complain if Israel toughens its methods further."
Bush's comments sparked widespread condemnation from Palestinian officials, with Arab League representative Hanan Ashrawi accusing him of being a spokesman for hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Meanwhile, Israel Radio reported Monday that the Israeli inner security cabinet has decided to continue its aggressive policy of the assassination of Palestinian activists - a policy it terms "active defense", and which has so far claimed the lives of more than 50 Palestinian activists.
The international community has condemned Israel's assassination policies.
Sharon convened the inner cabinet late Sunday night, with Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer in attendance, Israel Radio said, according to the Chinese News Agency, Xinhua.
Describing Arafat as "a savage enemy", Ben Eliezer expressed his anger at the Palestinian president's tour of Asia. Arafat was seeking support after the U.S. opposed the Palestinian bid to win U.N. backing for a Security Council resolution to deploy international observers to the region.
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