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Israel Arrests Son of Suspected Nahariya Operative
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, Sept 10 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The son of the suspected operative who killed three Israelis and injured 36 Sunday in the northern Israeli town of Nahariya has been arrested by Israeli security forces, public radio reported.
Salah Hbeishi, whose age was not revealed, was arrested Sunday night and charged with alleged murder and complicity to murder, the radio said Monday, adding a magistrate had demanded his detention be extended, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
The suspected operative is 48-year-old Mohammad Salah Hbeishi, a resident of the Israeli Arab village of Abu Sanan, located in northern Israel between Nahariya and Akko, a statement from Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office said Sunday night.
Mohammad Salah Hbeishi's ID card was found at the blast scene, but his body was torn to shreds by the explosion and could not be identified, the statement added.
Hbeishi was a member of the Israeli Arab Islamic resistance Movement, and a former candidate for a seat in his local municipal council.
The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack, the first military operation by an Israeli Arab since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 on occupied Palestinian land.
Israel came into existence in 1948 after Jewish groups launched a war against their Muslim neighbors in 1948 and declared today's illegal state of Israel. Arabs and Muslims believe Israel is an extension of the colonial period that saw the occupation of Muslim and Arab countries by Western powers.
Israel, backed by some Western powers, claims Jerusalem as its capital, but both Muslims and the United Nations do not recognize this.
Hbeishi was suspected of having joined a cell of the Islamic group in the northern West Bank city of Jenin, AFP reported.
Following the arrest of four Israeli Arabs in connection with an August 31st military operation at the Golani crossroads in northern Israel, Israeli security officials expressed concern at links between Palestinian resistance groups and Israel's Arab population, AFP added.
A founder of an association of Arab Israelis Monday urged Muslim leaders to cancel a
fatwa (religious ruling) which he said allowed Muslims to carry out martyr operations.
"I am unable to accept these acts which hit innocent people ... for a long time I have urged Israelis and Palestinians to leave the civilian population out of their conflict," Sheikh Ibrahim Nimer Dawish, founder of the Islamic Movement, said in Hebrew on Israeli public radio.
Earlier, prominent Muslim scholars had issued a fatwa condoning Palestinian martyr operations to counter Israeli attacks and assassinations of Palestinians.
The fatwa stipulates that a person who carries out such an operation is considered a martyr since he sacrifices his own life for the sake of freedom of the land and for the sake of Allah.
The view, adopted by a majority of contemporary Muslim scholars, is that Palestinians who detonate explosives, killing themselves in the process, in occupied land so as to show resistance against occupiers are martyrs, is correct for the following reasons:
A person who blows himself up sacrifices his life for the survival of others. He dies for his homeland and his holy sites.
Those disarmed (Palestinian) people are subject to a daily process of elimination. Their houses and factories are destroyed and their farms are devastated.
The fatwa, however, differentiates between suicide and martyr operations. It says there is a big difference between a mere suicide and "sacrificing one's soul for the sake of one's country". So it is incorrect to term resistant acts staged against aggressors or imperialists as "suicide operations", because these resistant acts, which result in martyrdom, bring tremendous reward, and staging such acts against aggressors is obligatory if it is the only way to repel attacks and aggressions; otherwise, they are forbidden.
Suicide is forbidden, as Almighty Allah says: "…nor kill [or destroy] yourselves: for verily Allah hath been to you Most Merciful. If any do that in rancor and injustice, soon shall we cast them into the fire: and easy it is for Allah." (An-Nisaa': 29-30). And there are many
Hadiths (sayings of Prophet Mohammed [SAW]) to that effect as well, the fatwa added.
Entering its second year, Israeli violence towards the al-Aqsa Intifada, or uprising, has left up to more than 600 killed, most of them Palestinians, the majority of whom are children and teenagers.
Israel has killed more than 60 Palestinian resistance activists in what it terms a policy of "targeted killings", a euphemism for state-sanctioned assassination, since the start of al-Aqsa Intifada last year, according to Palestinian official sources.
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