GAZA,
July 25 (IslamOnline) - Martyr operations will continue and Salah
Shehada’s assassination will only add to Hamas’s willpower, said
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of the Palestinian Islamic
resistance group Hamas, in an exclusive interview with IslamOnline
Thursday, July 25, 2002.
“There
will be no more peace initiatives”, Sheikh Yassin added, in
reference to Hamas’s announcement of a conditional truce and a halt
of all operations in return for an Israeli withdrawal from the West
Bank. The announcement came prior to Israel’s Monday, July’s 22
raid in which 18 civilians were killed and 150 were wounded.
A
U.S.-built Israeli F-16 warplane dropped a one-ton bomb on a building
in densely-populated Gaza City late Monday killing 17 civilians,
eleven of them children, including a two-month-old infant, as well as
its target for assassination, Salah Shehada, Hamas’s military chief,
and his bodyguard.
“The
Israelis are acting crazy,” said Sheikh Yassin. “Their war crime
against an entire district where civilians and children slept
peacefully bespeaks insanity. We have got used to such Israeli
reactions to any attempts to halt operations on the Palestinian side.
They simply want to turn the table against us. They don’t want
peace. They don’t want a future for the Palestinian people.”
Hamas
was ready to declare a “conditional truce” before Israel launched
its deadly raid in Gaza. “It is true ... [that Hamas] was ready to
declare a truce, on certain conditions, not only an Israeli
withdrawal” from reoccupied Palestinian areas, Sheikh Yassin told
Spain’s ABC newspaper. “However, after what happened, the
only worthy course left is holy war,” he added.
Sheikh
Yassin blasted the Israeli army’s denial of having known the
district contained civilians and children. “The criminal always
searches for alibis,” he said. “Israel has too active and accurate
agents to receive erroneous information in that respect. If it claims
it didn’t know there were civilians there, the tragedy is even
bigger.”
“If
Israelis really wanted peace, they would have implemented the Oslo
accords,” Sheikh Yassin told IslamOnline. “But they want to turn
all things upside down in their favor. They think that force will get
them what they want, but the coming days will prove otherwise. Israel
will realize that its power is futile before the willpower and
strength of the Palestinian people.”
About
whether Shehada’s assassination will affect the military power of
Hamas, Sheikh Yassin said: “No Palestinian, whether a political or
military activist, is exempt from the threat of assassination. Abu-Ali
Mosatfa, the late head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine [PFLP] was a politician and was assassinated. The enemy is
trying to destroy the strength of the Palestinian people, but it
won’t be able to achieve its end.”
“The
assassination of Sheikh Salah Shahada only gives a new push to our
resistance,” he continued. “Israelis seem to have forgotten
history. They killed Yahya Ayyash and a 100 Yahya Ayyash emerged in
his stead. They killed Salah Shahada and a 100 others will replace
him. If they were to kill Ahmed Yassin, a 100 Yassins will stand up to
them. They are mistaken if they think assassination could ever kill
resistance. Its only renders it stronger.”
About
the expected Hamas response to the Israeli attack on Gaza, Sheikh
Yassin said it is the military wing that plans and carries out such
operations, and it is this same wing that declared the intention to
retaliate.
“I
only stress here that this crime will not go unpunished,” he said.
Commenting
on the huge funeral of the victims of the Gaza raid, Sheikh Yassin
said: “The massive funeral which drew about 300,000 Palestinians
from the entire Gaza population of one million, demonstrates the
people’s consensus on Jihad and resistance.”
