Palestine warns Hamas against attacking Israel, identity revealed
Palestine, Politics, 4/6/1998

The Palestinian Government Monday night warned Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, against carrying out any suicide attacks on Israeli targets.

The Palestinian Government ultimatum to Hamas was released in Ramallah following earlier revelations that fellow members of Hamas' top leaders were the ones who shot dead the movement's top bomb maker, Mohyiddin Sharif, before they detonated his body in a stolen car in Ramallah last Sunday.

Palestinian Preventive Security commander Colonel Jibril Rajoub said his forces allowed a senior member of the political wing of Hamas to meet the suspects currently in Palestinian custody and heard from them how Sharif was assassinated. Rajoub did not give names. According to Palestinian security officers, Adel Awadallah, another chief military operative in Hamas, was the one who himself shot Sharif dead. Awadallah is still on the run and has been wanted by both Israel and the Palestine for several months.

In its warning to Hamas, Palestinian government stated that the Islamic movement would be held responsible in case suicide bombing attacks in the future lead to a further deterioration in the peace process. In a telephone interview with a Palestinian security officer, he stated that Hamas today faces an intersection and has to settle its internal differences rather than trying to refute the findings of the Sharif murder investigation.

If the Palestinian government version of Sharif's killing turns out to be true, it would be the first time a Hamas member is killed in part of internal assassinations. The movement has successfully been able to prevent internal differences from bursting out in a form of political assassination.

For the average Palestinian on the street, reports on internal frictions within Hamas seem to be unbelievable. But Hamas insiders blame those differences on the fact that military leaders of the movement are scattered in different countries and sometimes they tend to send duplicate and even contradicting instructions to their operatives in Palestine.

Previous Stories:
  Is Hamas on the verge of a split?   (4/6/1998)

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