Revenge will be 'earthshaking'
2004-03-27 22:01
Beirut, Lebanon - Israel faces "earthshaking" revenge for killing Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the Palestinian militant group's Syrian-based leader said on Saturday.
"I say with absolute certainty that the assassination of Sheik Ahmed Yassin will cause an earthquake to the Zionists," Khaled Mashaal told Dubai-based TV station Al-Arabiya. "Details of this (retaliation) are left to the (Hamas) military wing, (but) they will spare no (Israeli) targets."
Yassin, a quadriplegic, died in an Israeli missile attack on Monday as he was being wheeled out of a Gaza mosque. Israel has accused him of planning attacks that have killed hundreds of Israelis.
Mashaal, who heads Hamas's political bureau, also criticised America for vetoing a UN Security Council resolution on Friday condemning Israel for killing Yassin, but said his group will not attack US targets in the Middle East.
He warned, however, that "America's bias" toward Israel and its occupation of Iraq were creating enemies for it throughout the Arab and Islamic worlds.
America is an enemy
"America's stand reflects that America is an enemy of not the Palestinian people only, but also of the (Islamic) nation," he said.
"Hamas's battle is inside Palestine and against the Zionist occupation but I cannot predict what the reaction of Arab and Islamic masses might be."
The United States lists Hamas as a terrorist organisation.
Mashaal also urged Arab leaders meeting in Tunisia on Monday for a two-day summit not to revive a peace initiative with the Jewish state, saying "peace with Israel has become an illusion".
Some Arab states are hoping to revive the 2002 Beirut Arab initiative, tabled by Saudi Arabia, in which Arabs collectively offered Israel full peace and normal relations in return for total Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories, a Palestinian state and a solution for the refugees.
Mashaal's remarks came two days after the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas's military wing, threatened "an earthshaking response" to Yassin's assassination. The threat was made in a videotape broadcast by Al-Arabiya on Thursday.
- AP