Israel marks Hamas leader for death

Israel is set to resume targeted killings of top Hamas militants and levelled a blunt warning to the group’s elderly spiritual leader that he tops the list of those to be hunted and put to death.

The threat comes after a Palestinian suicide attacker blew herself up this week at a crossing point between Israel and the Gaza Strip, killing four Israelis.

Deputy Defence Minister Zeev Boim said Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin topped the list of those the military is stalking.

“Sheik Yassin is marked for death, and he should hide himself deep underground where he won’t know the difference between day and night. And we will find him in the tunnels, and we will eliminate him,” Boim said.

Yassin already dodged one Israeli attempt to kill him in September. A warplane dropped a 550-pound bomb on a building where he and the rest of the top Hamas leadership were meeting in a single room, but Yassin escaped with just a small wound to his hand.

After several other high-profile but ineffective attacks against Palestinian leaders, Israel scaled back its attacks in concert with a significant drop in Hamas bombings.

However, there was never evidence of even an unspoken agreement between the two enemies.

Israel insisted that the downturn was attributable to its own security forces, claiming that they arrested as many as 30 potential suicide bombers.

For their part, Hamas leaders, though often in hiding to avoid Israeli strikes, kept up their militant pronouncements and rebuffed efforts by Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia and Egyptian mediators to declare a halt to attacks against Israelis.

The suicide bombing on Wednesday put an end to the ”so-called quiet period,” said the Israeli air force commander, Major General Dan Halutz.

The attack at the Erez crossing was the first time the Islamic militant Hamas dispatched a woman suicide bomber. An Israeli security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Yassin issued a religious edict permitting women to carry out bombings, something Hamas resisted in the past, and that Yassin personally approved the attack.

Halutz denied that the reduction in Israel’s targeted killings was linked to a slowdown in Palestinian attacks.

“Since it is a preventive measure, it has nothing to do with the number of casualties that we have,” he told a meeting of the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs. Air force helicopters launching missiles have been used in most of the targeted killings, which Palestinians denounce as assassination of their leaders.

Without giving details, Halutz said the air force and military intelligence have developed “pinpoint” methods to “hit only those who deserve it.” However, dozens of bystanders have been killed in air airs strikes in towns, cities and refugee camps.

Thousands marched through Gaza City during the funeral for the bomber, Reem Raiyshi, 22, a mother of two small children. Masked gunmen carried her coffin, draped in the green Hamas flag.

“It is not enough to call her a hero. Calling her hero does not give the whole truth. This woman abandoned her husband and children in order to win paradise,” a Hamas leader, Mahmoud Zahar, said in a eulogy.