Israel pursues air strikes despite damage to Abbas

Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) commander Jamal Abu Samhadana is carried to the Al-Najar hospital in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah. Israel has pressed on with its targetting of Palestinian militants regardless of any embarrassment to the moderate president Mahmud Abbas, with whom it is meant to be lining up talks.(AFP/Said Khatib)

by Charly Wegman

Jun 9, 2006

Yahoo News

JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israel has pressed on with its targetting of Palestinian militants regardless of any embarrassment to the moderate president Mahmud Abbas, with whom it is meant to be lining up talks.

The overnight killing of Jamal Abu Samhadana, head of the Popular Resistance Committees, and three other militants came as Abbas put the finishing touches to a decree to hold a referendum next month in which he hopes voters will endorse an end to attacks inside Israel.

However, the immediate impact of the deadly air raid was to prompt renewed calls for revenge attacks from Abu Samhadana's followers, with hundreds of mourners calling at his funeral for suicide bombings to be carried out in Israel's commercial capital Tel Aviv.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said he wants to talk with Abbas soon about his plan to fix Israel's final borders in the course of his scheduled four-year term of office.

Olmert has stated that he would prefer a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians but says that Abbas can only prove himself as a genunine partner in the peace process if he gets the Islamist movement Hamas, which is now governing the Palestinian Authority, to renounce violence and recognise Israel.

In an interview with Israel's leading Yediot Aharonot daily, Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya said it was unrealistic for Israel to demand and expect an end to the firing of rockets into its territory from Gaza as long as deadly air raids continued over Gaza.

"You are making a big deal out of the Qassams (makeshift rockets). You see what is happening on our side -- attacks, raids, assassinations," he said.

"Stop the raids, the assassinations, start releasing prisoners, remove the 475 roadblocks throughout the West Bank, and you will get calm."

A senior official in Olmert's office denied there was any contradiction between the desire to do business with Abbas and the continuing air strikes.

"We have kept faith with (former Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon's strategy of trying to engage in dialogue with moderate Palestinian elements but having no compromise with the terrorists", the official told AFP.

"Samhadana was a wanted criminal and we have always said that there would be no sanctuary for terrorists," added the official on condition of anonymity.

"The defence establishment is not worried about the damage it does to Abbas," said Eldar, a columnist for the liberal Haaretz daily.

Olmert may even want to undermine Abbas in order to prove that he has no viable partner in the peace process and should therefore proceed with his threat to unilaterally fix Israel's borders, he added.

"Olmert is looking to prove Abbas is incapable of imposing order and that he has no other choice but to implement the realignment plan," said Eldar.

Saeb Erakat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said Israel appeared to have no concern about the impact of its military activity.

"I believe that the Israelis don't care about what is going on with the Palestinian debate and this crime in Gaza is part of a pattern of daily crimes that Israel is carrying out against our people," Erakat told AFP.

According to Israeli commentator Akiva Eldar, neither the government nor the military is particularly bothered about Abbas's domestic travails.

According to Ali Jarbawi, a specialist in politics at the West Bank's Bir Zeit University, the air strikes such as the one that killed Abu Samhadana and a raid on Friday afternoon that killed three other militants, were only likely to lead to more violence.

"From the Palestinian side there will be an escalation of the attacks against Israeli targets," he said.

However, Jarbawi said the strikes would unlikely have a long-term impact on the outcome of the battle between the feuding Palestinian factions.

"The internal struggle between Hamas and Fatah will be unaffected," he said.

"We've announced before
that we are a legitimate resistance
government - allowed by all laws"
- Khaled Abu Hilal