“A more serious reason to kill Yassin is Sharon's determination to pre-empt any offer of a long-term truce,” Seale

Additional Reporting By Moatesem al-Meniawi 

GAZA CITY, March 26 (IslamOnline.net) – Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon gave the green light and supervised the assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin mainly to scuttle all truce offers by the moderate Hamas spiritual leader, foreign and Israeli experts said Friday, March 26.

“A more serious reason to kill Yassin is Sharon's determination to pre-empt any offer of a long-term truce, or Hudna, by Hamas's spiritual leader,” wrote Al-Hayat columnist Patrick Seale.

Seale said that Sharon is well aware that Sheikh Yassin was probably the only man in Gaza with the authority to propose a truce and make it stick.

“By killing him, he has ruled out any such possibility,” he said.

Seale, an expert on Middle East affairs, said that Yassin was the most moderate of the Hamas leaders, who repeatedly offered Israel a long-term truce for ten or even fifty years on condition of its withdrawal from the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem (lands occubied by the Jewish state in 1967).

“Since 1993, Hamas has proposed a ceasefire with Israel no fewer than eleven times,” he said in the article, fully published in the Friday ediction.

Sheikh Yassin’s most recent offer of a truce was on December 1, 2003.

While his boldest proposal was in May 1999 when he told the Egyptian daily Al-Ahram daily: “We have to be realistic. We are talking about a homeland that was stolen a long time ago in 1948 and again in 1967. My generation today is telling the Israelis, ‘Let's solve this problem now, on the basis of the 1967 borders. Let's end this conflict by declaring a temporary ceasefire. Let's leave the bigger issue for future generations to decide”.

Ceasefire Ruled Out

They have tried to cover up their failure by a catastrophic escalation,” Avneri

Meanwhlie, Ghazzi Hamad, the editor in chief of Palestinian weekly al-Risala told IslamOnline.net Friday: “Hamas would try to show all of its deterrant force in unprecdented retaliation for assassination”.

Hamad said the revenge would trigger a bloody campaign by Israeli occupation forces against Palestinians, “which would then lead to a violent conflict between the two sides”.

He added that Hamas could not probe such appeasement plans now that the political and secuirty situation is such volatile.

Moahmed Ghazal, a Hamas leading figure in the West Bank made clear that that talk about a ceasefire after the assination is simply a wrong idea.

“Sheikh Yassin and other Hamas leaders offered truce for several years, but Israel turned down all such initiatives,” said Ghazal.

Palestinian resistance factions declared Monday, March 22, an “open war” against the Israeli occupation following the Monday killing of the quadriplegic Yassin.

‘Catastrophic Escalation’

Uri Avneri, Israel's veteran peace campaigner, refuted this week claims by Israeli officials that killing Sheikh Yassin would end Hamas (Palestinian) opetraions against Israeli targets or make the Jewish state safer.

“The fate of the State of Israel is in the hands of a group of bankrupt political and military leaders who have failed in all their actions. They have tried to cover up their failure by a catastrophic escalation,” Avneri was quoted by Seale as saying.

“This act will not only endanger the personal security of every Israeli, both in the country and around the world, but also the existential security of the State of Israel,” the Israeli expert said.

The analysts said that Sharon is equally concerned to pre-empt any possibility of a renewed peace offer from the Arab summit in Tunis on 29-30 March.

The summit was widely expected to repeat and clarify the offer of peace and normalization of relations with Israel made at the Beirut summit of March 2002, on condition that Israel withdrew to its 1967 borders and allowed the emergence of a Palestinian state.

“Any such exchange program is anathema to Sharon for whom a return to the 1967 borders in unthinkable. Sharon wants land not peace. He has no interest in negotiations with the Arabs,” Seale said.

“Any peace offer from Arab leaders would therefore be most unwelcome. By killing Yassin, Sharon has created conditions in which none will now be forthcoming”.

Instead, Seale said, the Israeli prime minister is engaged in one of Israel's traditional arm-twisting haggles with the U.S. government.

Late Thursday, March 25, the U.S. vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning the killing of Sheikh Yassin, the fourth time Washington kills a resolution against Israel in a little more than one year.

Seale said that Sharon therefore adopted a “strategy of fear”.

“For Sharon the choice is stark: victory or holocaust. To this way of thinking, a negotiated settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict based on compromise and mutual accommodation must be ruled out,” he said.

Land-Grab Acceptance

Seale belived that Sharon wants to trade an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza for an acceptance by Washington of his land-grab on the sepation wall – which U.S. Presidnet Georgr W. Busk remakrably described as "a problem" obstructing the creation of a Palestinian state.

“Israel is today more isolated and vulnerable than ever. The country is in a state of siege. This is the price Sharon is prepared to pay for his long-term dream of a Greater Israel”.

The 600km-long wall will cut occupied Jerusalem off from the rest of the West Bank. It will eventually snake some 900 kilometers (540 miles) along the West Bank and leave even larger swathes of its territory on the Israeli side.