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Israel Kills Hamas Member After Arafat Address
AL KHALIL (Hebron), West Bank, Dec 17 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Israeli forces shot dead a member of the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, early Monday as he tried to escape arrest in a Palestinian-controlled area of Al-Khalil (Hebron), Palestinian police said.
Yakub Adkediq Dakidak, 28, was shot as he fled his home at 3:00 am (0100 GMT) when Israeli police tried to seize him, police said. His body was found in the morgue hours later, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
According to the Israeli daily newspaper, Ha'aretz, Israeli military sources said that Israeli forces came to arrest Dakidak in his home in the Tufah neighborhood, in an area under full Palestinian control. He was shot and killed trying to escape from the soldiers. The sources did not say whether Dakidak was armed or not.
The operation in Hebron proves there is no Israeli truce," said Sheikh Abdel-Majid, Hamas representative in Bethlehem in response to the killing of Dakidak, the daily added.
"Today the Israelis assassinated Yakoub Dakidak in Hebron," said Mahmoud Ghazal, a local Hamas leader in Nablus. "We can't accept that [Arafat's call] while Israelis are not committed to the same agreement. I think the interest of the Palestinian people is to continue the Intifada."
He was the first person to be killed in the region since Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat called for an end to resistance operations against the Israeli occupation late Sunday and a return to negotiations.
His death brings the overall toll of almost 15 months of the Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, to 1,104 people, including 848 Palestinians - the majority is children and teenagers - and 233 Israelis.
Israel last week declared Arafat "irrelevant" for failing to stop a wave of Hamas and Jihad resistance operations against Israel.
But the beleaguered Arafat hit back with a strong appeal Sunday to end the attacks, which he said gave Israel a pretext to up its military operations against his administration, and vowed to take action against those who defied his leadership.
Palestinian police said Adkediq was on Israel's list of wanted Palestinian resistance activists and that the Israeli occupation army had tried to arrest him before.
Israel has shot dead more than 60 Palestinian resistance activists since the start of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in an assassination policy adopted and approved by the Israeli cabinet.
In continued violence, Israeli police on Monday briefly detained the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) pointman on Jerusalem in the annexed east of the disputed city, police spokesman Gil Kleiman said.
Jerusalem police briefly detained for questioning chief PLO official in Jerusalem, Sari Nusseibeh, along with Palestinian lawmaker Hatem Abdel Khader, prominent Palestinian attorney Jawad Boulous, and Nusseibeh's son, in a dispute over Nusseibeh's plans to hold an Eid (Muslim holiday) reception for foreign consuls and local dignitaries in a hotel in occupied East Jerusalem,
Ha'aretz reported.
"Sari Nusseibeh hasn't been arrested, he is being questioned by the police following his intention to organize today a meeting of several personalities in an east Jerusalem hotel, despite a government ban on this demonstration," Kleiman said.
Nusseibeh had planned to receive a number of dignitaries in the New Imperial hotel close to the Old City to mark the feast of Eid-al-Fitr, the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, his spokesman said.
Israeli authorities banned the meeting, although no specific reason for the ban was given, AFP reported.
Nusseibeh, successor to the late Faisal Husseini, was questioned at the Jerusalem police headquarters before being released, an AFP reporter at the building said.
Nusseibeh was appointed PLO commissioner for Jerusalem in October, and has caused a stir in Palestinian circles with calls for a complete re-think of the peace process.
He stirred considerable anger among many Palestinians when he said they should consider dropping their constant demand for all Palestinian refugees who fled Israel when it was created in 1948 to have the right to return.
He has said that in return, Israel should give up its insistence that Jewish settlements built on occupied Palestinian land not be dismantled.
Both entrenched positions have prevented any lasting solution to the decades-long conflict between the two being found, claimed Nusseibeh, the Oxford- and Harvard-educated head of the Al-Quds University in Jerusalem.
East Jerusalem was seized by Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, and annexed by Israel in 1980.
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