Israel assassinates Hamas military chief in Gaza

Israel’s Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu deliv­ers a state­ment to the media Wednes­day at Hakirya a mil­i­tary base in Tel Aviv, Israel. Israel’s prime min­is­ter says the mil­i­tary is pre­pared to broaden its oper­a­tion against Hamas tar­gets in Gaza. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Ariel Schalit)

IBRAHIM BARZAK

JOSEF FEDERMAN

Asso­ci­ated Press

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Israel car­ried out a blis­ter­ing offen­sive of more than 50 airstrikes in the Gaza Strip on Wednes­day, assas­si­nat­ing Hamas’ mil­i­tary com­man­der and tar­get­ing the armed group’s train­ing facil­i­ties and rocket launch­ers in Israel’s most intense attack on the ter­ri­tory in nearly four years.

Israel said the airstrikes, launched in response to days of rocket fire out of Hamas-ruled Gaza, were the begin­ning of a broader oper­a­tion against the Islamic mil­i­tants code­named “Pil­lar of Defense.” Israeli defense offi­cials said a ground oper­a­tion was a strong pos­si­bil­ity in the com­ing days though they stressed no deci­sions had been made and much would depend on Hamas’ reac­tion. There were no imme­di­ate signs of extra­or­di­nary troop deploy­ments along the border.

The attack came at a time when Israel seems to be under fire from all direc­tions. Rela­tions have been dete­ri­o­rat­ing with Egypt’s new Islamist gov­ern­ment, Egypt’s law­less Sinai desert has become a stag­ing ground for mil­i­tant attacks on Israel, and the Syr­ian civil war has begun to spill over Israel’s north­ern bor­der. Ear­lier this week, Israel fired back at Syria — for the first time in nearly 40 years — after stray mor­tar fire landed in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights.

With at least 10 Pales­tini­ans dead, includ­ing two young chil­dren, Wednesday’s offen­sive was cer­tain to set off a new round of heavy fight­ing with Gaza mil­i­tants, who have built up a for­mi­da­ble arse­nal of rock­ets and missiles.

It also threat­ened to upset Israel’s rela­tions with neigh­bor­ing Egypt and shake up the cam­paign for Israeli elec­tions in Jan­u­ary. In a pre­lim­i­nary response, Egypt recalled its ambas­sador to Israel in protest.

In a nation­wide address, Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu said Israel could no longer stand repeated attacks on its south­ern towns. Days of rocket fire have heav­ily dis­rupted life for some 1 mil­lion peo­ple in the region, can­cel­ing school and forc­ing res­i­dents to remain indoors.

“If there is a need, the mil­i­tary is pre­pared to expand the oper­a­tion. We will con­tinue to do every­thing to pro­tect our cit­i­zens,” Netanyahu declared.

The Israeli mil­i­tary said it was ready, if nec­es­sary, to send ground troops into Gaza. The defense offi­cials who said a ground oper­a­tion was likely in the com­ing days spoke on con­di­tion of anonymity because they were dis­cussing sen­si­tive mil­i­tary plans.

“We are at the begin­ning of the event, and not the end,” Defense Min­is­ter Ehud Barak said, in a joint appear­ance with the prime min­is­ter. “In the long run I believe the oper­a­tion will help strengthen the power of deter­rence and to return quiet to the south.” In a sign that the oper­a­tion was expected to broaden, the mil­i­tary was cleared to call up reserve units.

Res­i­dents in both Israel and Gaza braced for pro­longed vio­lence. Gazans rushed to stock up on food and fuel. After night­fall, streets were empty as the sounds of Israeli war­planes and explo­sions of airstrikes could be heard in the distance.

Israel declared a state of emer­gency in its south and can­celed school across the area for Thurs­day. Call­ing it a “spe­cial sit­u­a­tion,” Barak sought per­mis­sion to call up spe­cial reserve units for the oper­a­tions. Israeli police stepped up patrols around the coun­try, fear­ing that Hamas could retal­i­ate with bomb­ing attacks far from the reaches of Gaza.

Hamas has in the past staged dozens of sui­cide bomb­ings against Israelis and while its capa­bil­i­ties to do so today have been cur­tailed by Israeli and Pales­tin­ian crack­downs, it still has a net­work in the West Bank.

More than 65 rock­ets landed in south­ern Israel late Wednes­day. One pro­jec­tile struck a shop­ping mall in the south­ern city of Beer­sheba, caus­ing heavy dam­age but no casu­al­ties, police said.

The Israeli mil­i­tary said 25 rock­ets were inter­cepted by the “Iron Dome” rocket-defense sys­tem. Israeli media said the rock­ets had been headed toward Beer­sheba. Israeli air­craft con­tin­ued to pound Gaza into the night with some 50 airstrikes, with no reports of casualties.

The deadly attack on Hamas mas­ter­mind Ahmed Jabari marked the resump­tion of Israel’s pol­icy of “tar­geted killings,” or assas­si­na­tions of senior Hamas men. Israel has refrained from such attacks, which have drawn inter­na­tional con­dem­na­tions, since a fierce three-week offen­sive in Gaza that ended in Jan­u­ary 2009.

The ear­lier Gaza offen­sive killed more than 1,400 Pales­tini­ans, includ­ing hun­dreds of civil­ians. Israel has blamed Hamas for the heavy civil­ian casu­al­ties, accus­ing the group of using schools and res­i­den­tial neigh­bor­hoods as cover. Nonethe­less, Israel was harshly crit­i­cized inter­na­tion­ally for the heavy civil­ian death toll.

Jabari was the most senior Hamas offi­cial to be killed since that war. He had long topped Israel’s most-wanted list, blamed for mas­ter­mind­ing a string of deadly attacks that includ­ing a bold, cross-border kid­nap­ping of an Israeli sol­dier in 2006. He also was believed to be a key player in Hamas’ takeover of Gaza in 2007 from a rival Pales­tin­ian fac­tion, the Western-backed Fatah movement.

“I would call him the No. 1 ter­ror­ist in the Gaza Strip, whose hands are stained with blood,” said Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, Israel’s chief mil­i­tary spokesman.

Israel and Hamas have largely observed an infor­mal truce for the past four years.

But in recent weeks, the calm has unrav­eled in a bout of rocket attacks out of Gaza and retal­ia­tory Israeli airstrikes. From Israel’s per­spec­tive, Hamas esca­lated tit-for-tat fight­ing in recent days with a pair of attacks: an explo­sion in a tun­nel along the Israeli bor­der and a mis­sile attack on an Israeli mil­i­tary jeep that seri­ously wounded four soldiers.

Israeli defense offi­cials warned ear­lier this week that they were con­sid­er­ing resum­ing the assas­si­na­tion policy.

Even so, the Jabari killing, car­ried out in broad day­light, was shock­ing. Hamas offi­cials had brushed off the Israeli threats, illus­trated by Jabari’s deci­sion to drive in pub­lic. Hamas lead­ers typ­i­cally go into hid­ing at times of ris­ing ten­sions. Over the past two days, the fight­ing had shown signs of peter­ing out as Egypt­ian medi­a­tors tried to bro­ker a truce.

The Israeli mil­i­tary released a black-and-white video of the airstrike, show­ing a sedan mov­ing slowly along a road before going up in flames in an explo­sion so pow­er­ful that a large chunk of the vehi­cle flew high into the air.

Crowds of peo­ple and secu­rity per­son­nel rushed to the scene of the strike, try­ing to put out the fire that had engulfed the car and left it a charred shell. Plumes of black smoke wafted into Gaza City’s skies fol­low­ing other airstrikes. Ambu­lance sirens blared as peo­ple ran in panic in the streets and mil­i­tants fired angrily into the air.

The Israeli mil­i­tary also released footage of its strikes against weapons depots and rocket-launching grounds. Barak said these airstrikes hit “ter­ror infra­struc­ture” and launch­ers used to fire Iranian-made Fajr rock­ets. The rock­ets, capa­ble of reach­ing Tel Aviv, are among Hamas’ most pow­er­ful weapons.

The mil­i­tary said it hit dozens of medium-range rocket launch sites, many of which are located in res­i­den­tial build­ings, mil­i­tary offi­cials said. They spoke on con­di­tion of anonymity because they were not autho­rized to dis­cuss the oper­a­tion. The mil­i­tary also said the navy was strik­ing Hamas tar­gets located by the shore. Hamas denied that any of its weapons stores were hit.

Hamas announced a state of emer­gency in Gaza. It evac­u­ated all its secu­rity build­ings and deployed its troops away from their locations.

Out­side the hos­pi­tal where Jabari’s body was taken, thou­sands of Gazans chanted “Retal­i­a­tion!” and “We want you to hit Tel Aviv tonight!”

“I was sit­ting on my bed with my grand­son when sud­denly the wall col­lapsed on both of our heads,” said Mah­moud Bana, a 62-year-old man who was slightly wounded along with his 11-year-old grand­son. “We don’t know what hap­pened but we know it is going to be a few hard days ahead.”

In a state­ment, Hamas’ prime min­is­ter, Ismail Haniyeh, eulo­gized Jabari and vowed revenge.

“We mourn our late leader who walked the path of jihad while he knew the end, either vic­tory or mar­tyr­dom,” Haniyeh said. “There is no fear among our peo­ple and our resis­tance, and we will face this vicious attack.”

The airstrike bore many sim­i­lar­i­ties to the start of Israel’s pre­vi­ous offen­sive in Decem­ber 2008. That oper­a­tion also began with an air raid on Hamas build­ings, and also took place in between Amer­i­can pres­i­den­tial elec­tions and Israeli par­lia­men­tary elections.

Hamas accused Netanyahu of launch­ing Wednesday’s oper­a­tion to win votes in the Jan. 22 par­lia­men­tary elec­tion. But major Israeli par­ties, includ­ing the dovish oppo­si­tion, all lined up behind Netanyahu.

Still, the region has changed greatly over the past four years. Most crit­i­cally for Israel, Egypt is now gov­erned by Hamas’ ide­o­log­i­cal coun­ter­part, the Mus­lim Brotherhood.

Israel and Egypt signed a peace accord in 1979. Rela­tions, never warm, have dete­ri­o­rated since long­time Egypt­ian Pres­i­dent Hosni Mubarak was ousted in a pop­u­lar upris­ing last year. The assas­si­na­tion threat­ened to fur­ther dam­age those fray­ing ties.

On its offi­cial Face­book page, the Free­dom and Jus­tice Party, the Mus­lim Brotherhood’s polit­i­cal arm, called Jabari’s assas­si­na­tion a “crime that requires a quick Arab and inter­na­tional response to stem these mas­sacres against the besieged Pales­tin­ian peo­ple in the Gaza Strip.”

It accused Israel of try­ing to “drag the region toward instability.”

In Wash­ing­ton, the United States lined up behind Israel. “We sup­port Israel’s right to defend itself, and we encour­age Israel to con­tinue to take every effort to avoid civil­ian casu­al­ties,” said State Depart­ment spokesman Mark Toner. He denounced Hamas rocket attacks.

Netanyahu spoke to Obama and thanked him for the sup­port, said a state­ment from his office.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for calm and urged both sides to respect inter­na­tional human­i­tar­ian law.

On Wednes­day night, the U.N. Secu­rity Coun­cil met behind closed doors to con­sider an Egypt­ian request for an emer­gency meet­ing on Israel’s mil­i­tary action in Gaza.

Israel’s use of tar­geted killings is one of the most con­tentious poli­cies used against militants.

Advo­cates say tar­geted killings are an effec­tive deter­rent with­out the com­pli­ca­tions asso­ci­ated with a ground oper­a­tion, chiefly civil­ian and Israeli troop casu­al­ties. Pro­po­nents argue they also pre­vent future attacks by remov­ing their masterminds.

Crit­ics say the killings invite retal­i­a­tion by mil­i­tants and encour­age them to try to assas­si­nate Israeli lead­ers. They com­plain that the strikes amount to extra­ju­di­cial killings.

Dur­ing a wave of sui­cide bomb­ings against Israel a decade ago, the coun­try employed the tac­tic to elim­i­nate the upper ech­e­lon of Hamas leadership.

Dur­ing that period, Israeli air­craft assas­si­nated the pre­vi­ous com­man­der of Hamas’ mil­i­tary wing, Salah She­hadeh, the movement’s founder and spir­i­tual leader, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, his suc­ces­sor, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, and dozens of other Hamas mil­i­tary commanders.

The prac­tice set off a wave of crit­i­cism from rights groups and for­eign gov­ern­ments, par­tic­u­larly the strike that killed She­hadeh — a one-ton bomb that killed 14 other peo­ple, most of them children.

Pro-Palestinian groups have attempted, unsuc­cess­fully, to arrest Israeli offi­cials involved in the She­hadeh killing on war crimes charges. While charges have never been filed, fears of arrest have forced a num­ber of Israeli offi­cials to can­cel travel to Europe over the years.

Posted by AP News on Nov 14 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.