Israel, Hamas Vow Fight To The Finish

Yahoo/AP ^ | 6-13-2003 | Ibrahim Barzak

[blam]

Israel, Hamas Vow Fight to the Finish

By IBRAHIM BARZAK, Associated Press Writer

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Israel killed seven Palestinians, including a Hamas fugitive, his wife and their toddler daughter in its third rocket attack in 24 hours Thursday, as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the Islamic militant group threatened a fight to the finish.

The increasingly deadly confrontation — with 39 killed and more than 130 wounded on both sides in two days — left little hope President Bush 's Mideast peace initiative, launched just a week ago, will survive.

The U.S.-backed peace plan calls on the Palestinians to dismantle militant groups and on Israel to refrain from actions that undermine trust.

However, Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas insists he cannot use force against the militants who have rebuffed his truce offers. Sharon says he will not wait for Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, to negotiate a deal with them.

"If I need to choose between the war on terror and supporting Abu Mazen, I will chose the first option," Sharon told his Cabinet. He ridiculed Palestinian leaders as "crybabies" for saying they can't crack down on Hamas.

Palestinians, in turn, accused Sharon of doing everything he can to sabotage the "road map" peace plan. "(Sharon's) aim is to discredit the Palestinian government and to assassinate his real enemy, which is the road map," said Palestinian Cabinet Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo.

In Thursday's strike, Israeli helicopter gunships fired missiles at a car carrying Yasser Taha and Ibrahim Abu Srour, two Hamas fugitives. Both wanted men were killed, along with five other people, including Taha's wife, Fatima, 25, and their 2-year-old daughter, Asnan, doctors said. A baby bottle and baby shoes were pulled from the burning car. Twenty-nine people were wounded.

Israel army spokeswoman Maj. Sharon Feingold expressed regret at the civilian casualties. "A result of a mistake, family members were also killed," she said. "They were not targets."

The car was attacked in the Sheik Radwan neighborhood, just as mourners were leaving a nearby cemetery where 11 dead from two previous airstrikes were buried. Witnesses said one missile hit as Palestinians surrounded Taha's car.

Thursday's funeral procession was attended by about 35,000 mourners, who chanted: "Abu Mazen, listen closely. There is nothing except jihad (holy war)."

Later Thursday, an Israeli motorist was killed in a Palestinian shooting attack in the West Bank.

The chain of events began last week with a summit at which Sharon and Abbas promised Bush to get started on the peace plan.

Two days later, Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi announced the group was breaking off truce talks; over the weekend, Islamic militants killed five Israeli soldiers.

On Tuesday, Israel launched a missile strike on Rantisi's car; he was wounded. Hamas vowed revenge and on Wednesday, a Hamas suicide bomber killed 17 people in Jerusalem. That attack was followed by three rocket strikes against Hamas fugitives that killed 18 Palestinians in Gaza City, half of them civilians.

In the wake of the bloodshed, Israel and Hamas exchanged new threats that suggested a new stage in 32 months of fighting.

In perhaps its harshest warning since it first set off suicide bombings in the mid-1990s, Hamas said it was ordering "all military cells to act immediately and act like an earthquake to blow up the Zionist entity and tear it to pieces." The group said foreigners should leave for their safety. Hamas has generally acted on its threats.

Sharon, in turn, said he would fight militants "to the bitter end," regardless of the road map to peace.

Defending himself against a U.S. rebuke over the botched attempt on Rantisi's life, Sharon said he never promised Washington to halt the campaign against militants. However, targeting Rantisi, who considers himself a political leader without ties to the military wing, was seen as an escalation in Israel's battle against Hamas.

Mohammed Saleh, 19, a Hamas supporter carrying an M-16 assault rifle in Gaza on Thursday, declared: "Sharon will feel the revenge in his house. Nothing can protect him from my bullets. If not me, my brother, or the coming generation will fulfill our mission of liberation."

After nightfall Thursday, Israeli forces killed two Islamic Jihad activists who drew guns on soldiers who came to arrest them in the West Bank town of Jenin, the military said. Witnesses said special forces entered the town and opened fire on the two.

The Israeli airstrikes have further weakened Abbas at a time when expectations are fading that he will be able to rein in the militants. Abbas has said he does not want to unleash civil war and that the Palestinian security forces — in tatters after being targeted in repeated Israeli strikes — are unable to do the job.

Secretary of State Colin Powell plans to meet in Jordan next week with leaders of Russia, the European Union and the United Nations ) to try to repair the tattered peace process, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Thursday.

Assistant Secretary of State John Wolf also will arrive in the region in coming days to head a team of U.S. monitors who will supervise implementation of the road map. However, it appears unlikely either side will move forward on the plan in the current tense climate.

Difficulties in meeting the requirements of the plan had been expected, but many were taken by surprise by such a rapid return to bloodshed. There have been deadlier days in the past 32 months, but despair was perhaps more keenly felt because there had been hope of a new beginning.

"Bush, too, cannot compel Hamas to stop terror," Israeli commentator Sever Plotzker wrote in the Yediot Ahronot daily. "And the all-powerful Bush cannot compel Sharon to stop the assassinations (of Palestinian militants). The cause and effect, the effect and cause, it's all jumbled. Who remembers who started?"

[blam]

I wonder if we can expect to see some Hamas action in the USA?

[blam]

Israel Army Order: 'Wipe Out' Hamas

[Travis McGee]

Now we'll see what Hamas has really got.

[katz]

I certainly hope not. Why is our government so obsessed with 'peace' in the Middle East? If that Hamas was here, do you think we would contain our agression?

[blam]

"Now we'll see what Hamas has really got."

Yup. The IDF won't be sleeping for a while.

[blam]

"If that Hamas was here, do you think we would contain our agression?"

Nope.

[tallhappy]

Hamas, RIP, or rather RIH.

[Husker24]

If that Hamas was here, do you think we would contain our agression?

nope, we would launch a total invasion and systematically kill them all, even most Rat presidents would do this.

[katz]

Check the latest posts. White House Backs Israeli Attacks

[Travis McGee]

That's the truth. And not only the IDF, every Israeli citizen.

[Southack]

Hamas can't handle a war. Even *before* the U.S. took out their moneyman in Iraq, Hamas was caught experimenting with remote-controlled model airplanes laced with explosives, a sure sign that suicide bombers are in short supply for them.

But now, they can't even count on overt threats from Syria and Iran to keep the IDF in check, as the U.S. Army in Iraq would LOVE to have that very sort of excuse to issue forth some record-setting payback for that little embassy incident in Tehran back in 1979, as well as the Beirut barracks bombing attack in 1983.

Thus, the IDF could physically expel every Palestinian if it comes down to that.

And it's been done before. Certainly no one in polite European circles condemned the King when Jordan expelled Arafat and a million Palestinians from that country back in their Black September of 1969.

So, like they are going to suddenly criticize Israel for copying Jordan's previous move?!

Thus, Hamas has *everything* to lose. It has no big moneyman any longer. It can't count on any help from Iran and Syria, either.

...And it certainly can't fight the IDF on the battlefield.

Now tell me again why Hamas thought it such a bright idea to blow GWB's Road Map?!

[RJayneJ]

Quote of the Day by Carry_Okie

[NormsRevenge]

Hamas Orders an All-Out Assault on Israel

[Mark17]

Israel, Hamas Vow Fight To The Finish

I have always thought that there will be no peace, until one side no longer exists.

[jwh_Denver]

I have always thought that there will be no peace, until one side no longer exists.

Israel will remain standing, no matter what.

[Travis McGee]

"Hamas thought" implies that they are behaving rationally.

They are not.

They take their orders from the demon snakes running around in their brains courtesy of Mad Mo's insane murder cult.

[AlaskaErik]

There came a time when I realized that there will never be peace in the Middle East as long as there are Jews and Muslims there. I simply don't see it ever happening.

[Mark17]

Israel will remain standing, no matter what.

Maybe I should have said, there will be no peace until Islamic terrorists no longer exist.

[LibWhacker]

. . . the coming generation will fulfill our mission of liberation.

Liberation my eye. What's the last thing a homocide bomber says before blowing himself up? Allah Akbar, a religious war cry. Not "long live the resistance," nor "long live Palestine," nor "give me liberty or give me death."

The last thing they scream is this primitive barbaric cry of conquest, Allah Akbar. We're in a damned never ending war waged by religious throwbacks from Hell. Israel is only incidental, a small state that happens to have the misfortune of being on the borderland between civilization and Hell. So the existence or nonexistence of Israel, and therefore, any claimed liberation from it, is totally irrelevant in the larger picture and I'm only slightly sorry to say that muslim bastards everywhere will have to be exterminated or converted to really put an end to it once and for all.

Good luck to Israel. We're behind you 100%. Do what has to be done, though we know it'll only be a tiny step in the right direction.