Retaliation by Hamas called for
Palestine-Israel, Local, 4/2/1998

As thousands mourned Hamas military leader Mohyiddin Sharif in Ramallah, three major Palestinian groups called on the Palestinian government to cease immediately all sorts of contact with Israel, which is believed to be responsible for the killing of Sharif.

Senior officials in Palestine attended the funeral and those who spoke held Israel responsible for his killing. But Presidential Secretary Tayyeb Abdul Rahim issued a statement in which he said the investigation is taking place and results will be released soon. A Palestinian official announcement, meanwhile, criticized allegations made by some Hamas leaders abroad in which they said the Palestinian government was also involved in the killing of Sharif.

Palestinian Brigadier General Tewfiq Tirawi, head of the West Bank General Security Services in the Palestinian government, denied Israeli reports that he had met on Wednesday night with Ami Ayalon, the head of Israel¹s Shin Bet. The report, said Tirawi¹s statement is totally untrue and is meant to create confusion among Palestinians.

The funeral procession took off from Jamal Abdul Nasser mosque in Al Bireh, next to Ramallah, and marched through the streets of Ramallah. Hundreds of Palestinians had arrived early in the morning to the city from various parts of the West Bank and from East Jerusalem to attend the funeral while sporadic clashes took place between Palestinian youths and Israeli troops. In East Jerusalem, most of the schools were shut down and a near total commercial strike was declared to mourn the killing of Sharif.

Ibrahim Sharif, son of the assassinated Hamas leader, said the Israeli secret service have been chasing their family over the past few months. He added that senior officers came to their house on Tuesday night and told him this time they were not looking for his brother as usual but showed him pictures of the blasted car and remains of the body. Ibrahim confirmed that he himself saw three bullet holes in his brother¹s body.

Sharif¹s body was found in a blown up car in the city of Ramallah on the West Bank last Sunday night. Postmortem examinations by the Palestinian government showed that three bullets had riddled his body, two in the chest and one in the leg. The assumption was that Israel stood behind his murder. Israeli secret service agents were believed to have first shot Sharif dead and later detonated the car in Ramallah after they left the body inside. Israel denied all connection to the incident but still took extreme security measures out of fear that Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, might send its suicide bombers to retaliate Sharif¹s murder.

Sharif obtained the title, Engineer 2, after Yihya Ayyash, the former chief bomb maker in Hamas whom Israeli agents assassinated in Gaza early in 1996. Ayyash¹s assassination prompted a series of suicide bombing attacks in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Ashkelon and led to the defeat of former Labour Party leader Shimon Peres in the direct general election in May 1996.

"Peres then made a terrible mistake," noted a Palestinian observer in Ramallah Thursday, "and Israeli prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu has apparently committed the same mistake with his decision to take Sharif out." Any renewed suicide bombings in Israel might destabilize Netanyahu¹s already shaking coalition and is likely to push the Israelis back towards the Labour alternative, the observer said. A senior military source in Israel said Thursday morning that Hamas has both the means and potential suicide bombers necessary to perpetrate attacks on Israeli targets. The current assessment within the security establishment is that Hamas will strive to perpetrate such an attack as soon as possible so as to prove that no serious blow had been dealt to its military wing.

Israel again informed the Palestinian government it had nothing to do with the Sharif killing and said it expected the Palestinian government "to do its utmost to prevent Hamas members from perpetrating acts of terror against Israel." The message further stated that the Palestinians "had to calm the atmoshpere so as to prevent incitement to violence and that it was the duty of the PNA not to allow the death of Sharif to serve as a pretext for terror attacks." Senior Israeli officials warn that suicide or other form of attacks in the near future are liable to bring about a severe Israeli response, and undermine the negotiations for the second phase of further redeployment.

Israeli official sources insisted their secret services were not involved at all in the killing while Palestinians insist otherwise. During Sharif¹s funeral in Ramallah, angry crowd called for retaliation. Ron Ben-Yishai, a military analyst for the largest Hebrew daily claimed there is a possibility that Sharif was assassinated by Palestinian government officials "so as to provoke Hamas retaliation against Israel, which would, in turn, result in a loss of face for President Arafat." Nonetheless, Ben-Yishai still leans towards the working accident scenario.

Meanwhile, it was learnt that the Palestinian Preventative Security had arrested scores of Hamas members and affiliates in the Ramallah area, including one man who was suspected of having rented the apartment which Sharif used as a hideout. Israeli police sources said Sharif had spent some time in Ramallah in the last a few months and managed to train a number of potential bombers, including Abdullah Bakri, who was arrested by Israel some two months ago.

Previous Stories:
  Israel increases security in expectation of suicide attacks   (4/1/1998)
  Arafat rejected secret talks with Netanyahu as Hebron threaten outbreak   (3/17/1998)
  Palestine shut down television and radio stations   (2/21/1998)

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