Hamas Was Ready
to Declare Truce, Now Every Israeli Is A Target
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All
Palestinian resistance factions have sworn to make Israel pay
for the deadly Gaza attack
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CAIRO,
July 24 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – The spiritual leader of
Hamas said his Palestinian Islamic resistance movement was ready to
declare a “conditional truce” before Israel launched its deadly
raid in Gaza, in an interview published Wednesday, July 24.
“It
is true ... (that Hamas) was ready to declare a truce, on certain
conditions, not only an Israeli withdrawal” from reoccupied
Palestinian areas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassine told Spain’s ABC newspaper.
“However,
after what happened, the only worthy course left is holy war,” he
added.
Hamas
warned Wednesday that every Israeli is now a target for attack,
following Israel’s devastating F-16 air strike on Gaza City.
“Every
Israeli, at any time and in any place, is now a target for strikes by
the Palestinian resistance,” Hamas spokesman Mahmoud al-Zahar said,
quoted by Egypt’s news agency MENA.
“Hamas
will not accept any condition for halting the resistance operations to
avenge the Palestinian martyrs,” he said.
Zahar
said Hamas would carry out attacks that would “teach Israel the
lesson that it will have to think a thousand times before undertaking
such crimes again.”
All
Palestinian resistance factions have sworn to make Israel pay for the
attack, which counted nine children among the dead as a guided bomb
weighing one ton was dropped on a crowded residential area of Gaza
City.
The
Times newspaper in London on Wednesday reported that a Palestinian
declaration containing an unconditional commitment to end resistance
attacks on Israeli civilians was finalized just hours before the Gaza
strike.
Meanwhile,
Israel braced Wednesday for revenge attacks as its leadership tried to
back away from its deadly air strike in Gaza City that triggered a
barrage of condemnation from around the world.
In the
face of withering international criticism, including a rare rebuke
from its top ally Washington, Israel tried to play down the political
fall-out from the raid.
Finance
Minister Silvan Shalom claimed that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was
not informed of the risk to civilians in the raid.
The
raid was unanimously condemned by the international community,
although Sharon said it was “one of the most successful
operations” to have been carried out by Israel’s military.
Sharon
and his defense minister, Binyamin Ben Eliezer, both personally
approved the attack.
But
President Moshe Katsav said the political leadership must take
responsibility for the raid, which he described as a “mishap.”
He
stressed however that there was “no reason to hang anybody for what
happened.”
International
criticism of Israel’s raid, denounced by Washington as
“heavy-handed” and by London as “unacceptable and
counterproductive,” was all the more pointed as it came at a time
when hopes for progress in peace talks had been on the rise.
Peres
had met with a Palestinian delegation to discuss ways in which Israeli
forces which have reoccupied almost the entire West Bank since June 19
could pull back as Palestinian security services deploy to maintain
order.
They
had also discussed ways of relieving the suffering of hundreds of
thousands of Palestinians caught under Israeli curfew in seven of the
eight cities in the territory under the control of the Israeli army.
The
Palestinians accused Israel of deliberately sabotaging the budding
peace talks.
In an
apparent foretaste of revenge, three homemade Qassam rockets - the
Brigades’ trademark weapon - exploded near the village of Sderot in
southern Israel Tuesday evening without causing casualties.
They
had been fired from the northern Gaza Strip, where illegal Jewish
settlements had a tense night of sporadic homemade mortar attacks,
lightly wounding two settlers.
In the
West Bank, the wife and daughter of a Palestinian military commander
were shot and injured overnight by Israeli forces who entered the
oasis city of Jericho in a failed bid to capture him, Palestinian
security sources said.
Jericho
is the only West Bank city to have been spared reoccupation.
The
Israeli daily newspaper, Ha’aretz, said the Gaza bombing and its
repercussions would only prolong Israel’s deployment in the West
Bank, which army officials have already said could last several
months.
But
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said that an end to Israeli
occupation of Palestinian areas would make it easier to mediate a
peace settlement.
“It
will be helpful and I hope it will be done,” Annan told CNN
television.
“If
they were to do that I think it will give some relief to the
Palestinians.”
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