Israel's death struggle with Hamas

Last Updated: 2004-04-01 10:54:58

At this juncture, it does seem as if the Israeli government of Ariel Sharon has given up on any peace process in favor of head-on confrontation with Palestinian radicals. On Monday, the Israeli military struck and killed Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in a highly controversial action. But to understand why this action was chosen, we need to take a look at the target and the nature of the organization he founded.

At dawn on Monday, just after muslim morning prayers, three Israeli-launched anti-tank missiles slammed into a car carrying Ahmed Yassin--the founder of Hamas--outside a mosque in the Gaza strip. Anti-tank warheads are purpose-built to do a number on human bodies inside the confined space of a vehicle. They don’t leave much behind. These particular missiles also didn’t leave much behind of the already-stalled “roadmap for peace” between Israelis and Palestinians.

Most of the world is denouncing the Israeli action, and Palestinian groups are vowing bloody revenge--even naming the U.S. as a possible target. With typical understatement, the U.S. State Department expressed “deep concern” and said the strike was “unhelpful”. At this juncture, it does seem as if the Israeli government of Ariel Sharon has given up on any peace process in favor of head-on confrontation with Palestinian radicals. But to understand why this action was chosen, we need to take a look at the target and the nature of the organization he founded.

Sheik Ahmed Yassin--crippled in an accident since his youth--founded the Islamic fundamentalist group Hamas in 1987. The name Hamas comes from an Arabic acronym for “Islamic Resistance Movement”, but also means “courage” or “bravery”. Yassin’s role was that of the spiritual and conceptual leader of an organization that in the 1990s came to rival the secularist PLO, led by Arafat. Hamas is much more than an anti-Israeli terrorist organization. It builds schools, mosques and clinics and has a large political component. But in 2000, after the breakdown of the Oslo peace talks, Hamas began a campaign of suicide bombings that has claimed the lives of over 450 Israelis in the past three and a half years.

To get a better grasp of what Hamas stands for, and the ideology that its late leader espoused, you need go no farther than the organization’s own website--www.hamasonline.com--and public statements by Sheik Yassin himself.

• The slogan of Hamas: “Allah is its goal, the Prophet its model, the Quran its Constitution, Jihad its path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes.”

• From the Hamas Covenant (or charter): “There is no solution to the Palestinian problem except by Jihad. The initiatives, proposals and International Conferences are but a waste of time, an exercise in futility.”

• On martyrdom operations: “The Mujahid (holy warrior) acts out of love for Allah and a desire to please Allah: to do what Allah has commanded, which in the specific instance of martyrdom operations is confronting and attacking the enemies of Islam, even if this means one's own death. . . The intention of the Mujahid is a pure intention.”

• Sheik Yassin in BBC press interview: “Palestine is an Islamic land consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgment Day. . . Peace with Israel is not possible . . . The only recourse left is to fight, and to regain Palestine by force, or die trying.”

• Koranic scripture, quoted in the Hamas Covenant -- "The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews , when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”

Yes, vaporizing an aging, crippled sheik with anti-tank missiles seems like a callous act that can only invite more bloodshed. But bear in mind that this particular sheik inspired (and may have actually commanded) a wave of suicide attacks like the one that literally tore apart bus number 19--and its passengers--in the streets of Haifa on January 29.

T.T.