SPECIAL REPORT part 2: The release of Hamas's spiritual leader, Sheikh Yassin
Regional, Politics, 10/1/1997

The release of Sheikh Yassin has always been a Palestinian demand which Israel preferred to ignore, though many Israeli officials warned that should anything happen to Sheikh Yassin in prison, Israel would be the main party to pay the price. But Israel has repeatedly rejected his release. Netanyahu's government was not the only one that refused to release Sheikh Yassin. The previous Labor government, both under assassinated Yitzhak Rabin and his successor Shimon Peres also refused to release the sheikh despite tremendous pressure by the Palestinian National Authority which argued that the release would help fortify the pro-peace camp and would minimize Hamas¹s opposition to the peace accords between the Palestine National Authority and Israel.

The crippled sheikh had in recent years suffered serious health problems. His attorney, Israeli Knesset Member Abdul Malek Dehamsha of the Arab Democratic Party, said that he had warned of a worsening in the Sheikh¹s health already last year. ³The answer I received was that the Sheikh¹s health is satisfactory. But the reality is different, and the Sheikh¹s condition is deteriorating,² he said a few weeks ago.

The case of Sheikh Yassin, 60, has become a matter of strategy the Israeli government has used over the past few years with the aim of extracting concessions from the Palestine National Authority. It was more of a blackmail than any security consideration that the Israeli government had in mind when it repeatedly refused to release the sheikh. As far as security considerations were concerned, Israel feared that should the Sheikh die in an Israeli prison, demonstrations would wrack all of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and Jerusalem in addition to possibly setting off a wave of suicide bombings.

But surprisingly enough, the Israeli government did almost nothing to ease those worries. Dr. Mahmoud Zahhar, a chief member of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, had reiterated, on many occasions, the threat that should Sheikh Yassin die inside the Israeli prison, a wave of revenge suicide attacks will strike Israel in a manner that is much more pain-inflicting than the wave that Israel witnessed in March and February last year in revenge for the assassination of Yihya Ayyash, the mastermind of a number of military attacks by Hamas who was blown up by a bomb planted by the Israeli Mossad in his mobile phone in Gaza early last year.

Israel¹s top intelligence branches and security services have repeatedly recommended that Sheikh Yassin be released from prison but to no avail. They were all motivated by the fear that his death in jail would trigger a new form of intifada (Arabic for uprising). Not only that, but the relatively moderate approach that the sheikh has recently adopted vis-a-vis the Palestine National Authority, as opposed to the hard line attitude of the Hamas leadership in exile, has encouraged many Israelis to suggest that his release would strengthen the moderate trend within the movement and would eventually isolate the leadership abroad, mainly in Syria and Sudan. Ironically speaking, officers in the Shin Bet, Israel¹s domestic intelligence agency, were quoted as saying that they would celebrate the release of Sheikh Yassin no less than his supporters in Gaza.

Sheikh Yassin was arrested in 1989 after Hamas members abducted two Israeli soldiers and killed them. The soldiers, Ilan Saadon and Avi Sasportas, were buried at two different sites. The body of Sasportas was retrieved a while later but Saadon¹s body could not be located until two months ago when Hamas, with the direct intervention of Sheikh Yassin, yielded information to the Palestinian National Authority leading to the site where he body was buried. Three years after his arrest, Israeli circles started to contemplate the release of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin. At that time, it was Matan Vilnai, currently deputy chief of staff who was the commander of the southern district, who suggested that Israel should release the sheikh from prison. In debates he initiated at the office of the special advisor to the prime minister on the Palestinian uprising, Vilnai argued that the Palestinian intifada would get extra fuel if anything wrong happens to the Sheikh. Israel later suggested to the sheikh to agree to a voluntary expulsion from the Occupied Territories but he refused.

In December 1994, signs of moderation started to appear in Sheikh Yassin¹s views. Visited by Sheikh Abdallah Nimer Darwish of the Islamic Movement in Israel and Dr. Ahmad Tibi, the special advisor to PNA President Yasser Arafat on Israeli affairs, Sheikh Yassin expressed readiness to help locate the body of the Israeli soldier, Saadon, but said he had no clue where he was buried. He also issued a statement through his two visitors calling on both the Palestine National Authority and Hamas to avoid inter-Palestinian fighting, which had almost broken out after the fierce clashes between the two sides on Friday 18 November, 1994. In September 1995, the sheikh supported Hamas¹s participation in Palestinian elections for the legislative council but finally the movement decided to let only non-official members run. He too called on Hamas to cease the suicide bomb attacks on Israel and sent blessings to President Arafat through two of his visitors, Khaled Al Hindi and Ismail Haniyyeh, both members of Hamas.

Later Sheikh Yassin went further down the road of moderation and issued a statement calling for better agreements between the National Authority and Hamas and called on Hamas to stop suicide attacks in all sites, not only from within the PNA areas, meaning that no further attacks in Israel itself should be carried out. Before the Palestinian legislative council elections, Arafat again called on Israel to release the sheikh and help isolate the hard liners within the movement but his request fell on deaf ears, probably because of the wave of bus bombings that hit Israel a month after those elections. Yet Arafat was not the only one who sought to intervene on behalf of Sheikh Yassin. Former Prime Minister of Israel, Shimon Peres, too gave it a try. Shortly before the Israeli general election on May 29, Peres dispatched Rabbi Menachem Froman of Taquo¹ settlement near Bethlehem to visit the sheikh in his prison. Froman, a relatively moderate figure among the Jewish settlers of the West Bank, came back with quotations from the sheikh saying that ³no conflict ever existed between Islam and Judaism but the problem between them is caused by their secular leaders, whose policies have blown up the ground of peaceful coexistence between the two sides.² In those two visits by Froman, Sheikh Yassin reportedly expressed his support for the Islamic Movement in Israel to run for elections, and it is believed that the movement would have not run for those elections if it had not been for Sheikh Yassin¹s support.

Sheikh Yassin was sentenced in 1989 by an Israeli military court to life imprisonment plus 15 extra years for his role in the kidnapping and killing of the two soldiers.

Previous Stories:
  SPECIAL REPORT part 1: The release of Sheikh Yassin   (10/1/1997)
  Jordan admitts threat to Hamas leader while calls to sever ties with Israel increase   (9/29/1997)

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