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Hamas Activist Killed As Sharon Tries For National Unity
JERUSALEM, Feb 20 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - An activist from the resistance movement Hamas was also shot and killed near a refugee camp, in what Palestinians called an assassination by Israel as U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell prepared a visit to the region wracked by five months of bloodshed.
"This is an utter crime and an attempt to kill in cold blood, which is part of the Israeli policy to suppress the Palestinian people and destroy the Intifada," said Jamal Salim, a Hamas leader in Nablus, as quoted by the BBC.
"The policy of aggression and assassinations only leads to more violence ... Assassinations are a policy of war crimes for which the Barak government is responsible," Palestinian information minister Yasser Abed Rabbo told Voice of Palestine radio.
According to Israeli media, the activist, 25-year-old Mahmud el-Madini, a captain in Hamas's armed wing, had been involved in at least two bombings in Israel and was on his way to commit another attack.
Witnesses said he was shot three times in the chest by unidentified gunmen in the Balata refugee camp near the city of Nablus, as he walked from a mosque in the refugee camp to a nearby grocery shop.
Palestinian forces have detained several people over the killing, the head of Palestinian intelligence in Nablus, Talal Dweikat, said, declining to say whether those arrested were suspected Palestinian collaborators.
Some 20,000 people attended el-Madini's funeral in the West Bank town of Nablus, waving Palestinian and Hamas flags and chanting "revenge, revenge."
"This gathering is a message to the Israeli occupation that blood will only make us steadfast and united," Jamal Mansur, a prominent Hamas leader in Nablus, told the crowds.
Meanwhile, Israel's newly triumphant right wing called on Tuesday for a national unity government to be formed within a week.
Israeli Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon and defeated premier Ehud Barak had agreed last Thursday to form a coalition, but amid fierce opposition from within his Labor party Barak has pushed back a party vote on the decision until Monday.
Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert, a negotiator for Sharon's Likud party, said Labor must choose by that day whether to join a national unity government.
"They must understand that with all the will in the world, we cannot wait until after Monday," Olmert told Israeli army radio.
Sharon is worried Israel would be "speaking with two voices" when Powell visits as part of his Middle East tour due to start in three days, said Sharon spokesman Raanan Gissin.
He said Sharon had set no formal deadline but that Likud was urging Labor "to finish as quickly as possible because of the gravity of the security situation.
Violence continued Tuesday, another Palestinian-declared "day of rage," with a Jewish settler stabbed by a Palestinian woman and a Palestinian schoolgirl shot in the leg and hand by the army.
Both incidents occurred in the flashpoint city of Hebron, where the Israeli army controls one-fifth of the city to protect 400 hardline Jewish settlers who are surrounded by 120,000 Palestinians.
The Israeli army said it was responding to gunfire on a Jewish settlement. But Palestinians said the girl was injured when soldiers fired rubber bullets in response to boys throwing stones.
The army also arrested the 20-year-old Palestinian woman who stabbed the settler, family members said.
On Monday, eight people had been injured in violence in the West Bank, including a Dutchman and a South African who worked at an amusement park.
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat said Monday that the "five-month aggression against our people, the blockade on our towns in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the attacks by the Israeli army only strengthen our determination to resist."
Palestinian negotiators plan to meet Tuesday in Washington with Powell and other top U.S. officials, the first such encounters since the administration of President George W. Bush took office a month ago.
Asked what Palestinians expected from Powell's upcoming visit, Arafat said Monday: "First of all to push forward the peace process and to protect it after all that we have faced."
Powell's trip comes as Israeli and U.S. forces continue a week of joint exercises, including training on Patriot missiles.
The drills come just days after renewed Iraqi threats against the Jewish state following a U.S.-British air raid on Baghdad, although both U.S. and Israeli officials have insisted the exercises were planned long in advance.
Syrian government newspaper Tishrin said Bush's administration has made a "bad start" in the Middle East.
"The U.S. strikes against Iraq and then the U.S.-Israeli maneuvers in the Negev desert have deepened the disappointment" with the new administration, it wrote.
Meanwhile, an Israeli government commission resumed hearings into the police's killings of 13 Israeli Arabs in October.
The opening session Monday was halted for some two hours after a scuffle between family members of a slain Israeli Arab and a border guard who had been called to testify.
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