Mahmoud Zahar
Posted on 04/18/2004 5:04:54 PM PDT by saquin
WITHIN hours of the killing of Abdel Aziz Rantissi by the Israelis, the Palestinian militant group Hamas chose a grey-bearded and softly spoken physician to become its third leader in just under four bloody weeks in the Gaza Strip.
The appointment of Dr Mahmoud Zahar, 53, was kept secret as he joined tens of thousands of Palestinians at the funeral of Dr Rantissi.
Dr Zahar is married with children. He was for years best known as a working doctor and the personal physician of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Hamas’s spiritual leader, who was killed in an Israeli missile attack last month.
But in a secret selection process Dr Zahar was chosen to lead the organisation in Gaza, its birthplace and main support base.
The announcement was kept secret, but Palestinian, Israeli and Western sources quickly confirmed that the Egyptian-educated doctor had assumed the leadership — and with it an automatic place at the top of Israel’s hit list.
“There were no real other candidates for the leadership in Gaza,” a Western diplomat said. “Most of them have been killed. Not surprisingly Hamas is not going to make the announcement public.”
Dr Zahar was certainly not intimidated yesterday when he joined 70,000 Hamas mourners paying their last respects to Dr Rantissi, who died on Saturday night when the car he was travelling in was hit by a missile fired from an Israeli helicopter gunship.
“You can see (the future of) the movement in the sea of people here today,” said Dr Zahar, who last year survived an Israeli assassination attempt that killed his son. “We are committed to the policy of resistance and we cannot be swayed. Hamas cannot be defeated. Hamas cannot be broken.”
That defiance was being challenged in Israel last night. After Sheikh Yassin’s death, Hamas warned Israel that it had opened “the gates of hell”, and after Dr Rantissi’s assassination the group vowed a “volcano of revenge”.
But so far the organisation responsible for pioneering suicide bombings against Israeli civilians has failed to strike back, and Israeli security officials believe its “decapitation” policy is working.
“The rest of the leadership are on the run. When they’re fleeing they can’t organise or perpetrate terrorist acts,” said a spokesman for Ariel Sharon, the Prime Minister. “We knew these targeted assassinations are not going to dismantle Hamas, but when the leaders spend more time on their protection or hiding out they lose their ability to operate.”
Despite international outrage at Dr Rantissi’s killing, Mr Sharon told cabinet colleagues he planned to continue striking terrorist organisations and their leaders. Ministers said that included Khaled Meshaal, Hamas’s external leader in Damascus, “the minute we have operational ability to do this”.
Killing Sheikh Yassin was easy as he followed the same routine each day. After assuming the leadership Dr Rantissi lived largely underground, appearing only when protected by crowds, but survived less than a month before the Israelis got him.
The outlook for Dr Zahar appears bleak. He has few places to hide from the prying eyes and ears of Israeli intelligence. Although Gaza’s narrow strip of land is teeming with more than a million Palestinians, the Israelis have built up an extensive network of informants who monitor the movements of key figures.
Same thing Hitler said about his "thousand year Reich."
Rising toll among Hamas leaders
THE assassination highlighted the deadly risk of a leadership role in Hamas — arguably the most dangerous job in the world. The most prominent figures in the organisation in recent years have included:
Dead: Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Founder, spiritual leader and figurehead. Quadriplegic, nearly blind and confined to a wheelchair. Established Hamas in February 1988 as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamist alternative to Yassir Arafat’s secular Fatah movement. Killed by Israel on March 22 this year.
Dead: Ismail Abu Shanab. A relative pragmatist within the political leadership. Not a familiar figure at public rallies. Assassinated last August.
Dead: Ibrahim Makadmeh. A senior Hamas strategist, killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza in March last year. Released in October 1997 as part of a deal by Israel to secure the freedom of two Mossad agents who had bungled an assassination attempt on Khaled Mashaal, the head of the group’s political office.
Alive: Dr Mahmoud Zahar. Sheikh Yassin’s personal physician and a relative hardliner within what remains of the senior political hierarchy. Perhaps the most high-profile remaining Hamas leader. He survived one assassination attempt last summer, but his son was killed.
Alive: Ismail Haniya. A relative moderate among the next generation of the Hamas hierarchy. Well known in Gaza. Hamas’s go-between with the Palestinian Authority.
Dead: Salah Shehada. Head of Hamas’s military wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades. Killed by a one-tonne bomb in July 2002 that killed up to 17 other Palestinians in Gaza.
Dead: Yehiyeh Ayyash, a master bomb-maker known as “The Engineer”, was killed by a booby-trapped mobile phone in Gaza in 1996.
Alive: Mohammed Deif. Believed to be Shehada’s replacement at the head of Izz al-Din. Israel’s most-wanted man and in permanent hiding.
Alive: Khaled Mashaal. Head of Hamas’s overseas political bureau, based in Damascus. A physics teacher born in the West Bank. Survived a bungled Mossad assassination attempt in 1997 when Israeli agents were captured in Jordan after trying to inject him with poison darts. The late King Hussein demanded the antidote and the release of Sheikh Yassin from prison in return for sending them back to Israel. He was expelled from Jordan in 1999 and moved to Syria.
Alive: Moussa Abu Marzook. Mashaal’s deputy. A US-educated engineer. Expelled to Jordan and then Syria. Will only be targeted by Israel if Ariel Sharon decides to launch assassinations in Syria.
My first inclination was to say, "Pull the trigger!" Upon further thought I say this. Pull that trigger within 24 hours of the first act of terrorism that takes place under his command.
Cause and effect is a powerful motivational force.
LOL So naturally everybody knows.
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