Assassins
Israeli Strategy And The
Assassination Of Sheikh Yassin
JNV Anti-War Briefing 59 (27 March 2004)
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THE ASSASSINATION OF SHEIKH YASSIN
Israeli Prime Minister ‘Ariel Sharon personally approved
the missile attack that killed the quadriplegic Hamas founder
as he was pushed in his wheelchair outside his local mosque.’
(Guardian, 23 Mar., p. 1) ‘Sheikh Yassin was believed
to be the highest-profile Palestinian ever killed by the
Israelis.’ (Times, 23 Mar., p. 1) ‘While
Yassin was reviled in Israel for his support for suicide bombers
and a prediction that Israel would one day cease to exist, opinion
polls of Palestinians consistently ranked him second to Yasser
Arafat as a popular and trusted leader.’ (Washington
Post, 23 Mar., p. A01)
‘Like a Mandela – unseen,
unheard, yet charismatic in his prison cell – now half
blind and deaf as well as crippled, Yassin’s prestige
grew inexorably, just as that of Arafat, the official Mr
Palestine, an ever-greater travesty of all that Mandela ever
stood for, withered beneath the glare of a publicity he could
no longer escape.’ (Guardian, 23 Mar., p. 25)
[‘Israeli army chief of staff, Lieutenant
General Moshe Yaalon, hinted that the targets could now include
Yasser Arafat... a government source said the promise given
by Mr Sharon not to harm Mr Arafat applied only to the run-up
to the war in Iraq last year.’ (Guardian, 24 Mar.,
p. 1)]
TIMING: THE WITHDRAWAL FROM GAZA
Why now? Jonathan Freedland suggests that ‘The key to the
timing is Sharon’s plan for unilateral Israeli withdrawal
from Gaza’. He quotes ‘a high-ranking Israeli official’,
‘We’re not going to leave Gaza with our tails between
our legs.’ (Guardian, 24 Mar. p. 19) According to
Israeli journalist Ben Kaspit, it was Sharon himself who said
this. (Maariv, 22 Mar., website)
TARGET: MODERATION IN HAMAS
Why did Israel target Sheikh Yassin rather than military commanders?
Sheikh Yassin founded Hamas, but he was not the most aggressive
figure within it. Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia said
of the assassination, ‘It opens the door wide to chaos.
Yassin was known for his moderation and he was controlling
Hamas.’ (Guardian, 23 Mar., p. 1)
Much commentary has focused on the political
differences within Hamas. ‘Sheikh Yassin staved off strong
opposition from [Hamas leader] Dr [Abd al-Aziz] Rantissi last
year to the ceasefire that raised hopes among ordinary Palestinians
and Israelis, but collapsed amid mutual accusations of sabotage.
Now Dr Rantissi is in charge.’ (Guardian, 24 Mar.,
p. 4) Dr Rantissi, a paediatrician, ‘is viewed by Israeli
intelligence officials as a hardline fighter with no political
plan.’ (Telegraph, 24 Mar., p. 14)
While there are divisions in Hamas over
the idea of holding ceasefires prior to Israeli withdrawal,
Seumas Milne writes in he Guardian that Dr Rantissi ‘told
me in Gaza a couple of months back, Hamas is ready to call a
ceasefire that “should be seen in terms of years”
in exchange for full Israeli withdrawal from the territories
it has illegally occupied for the past 37 years.’ He quotes
Dr Rantissi: ‘We can accept a truce... live side by side
and refer all the issues to the coming generations.’ (25
Mar., p. 24)
On his trip to Palestine, Milne discovered
through face-to-face interviews with faction leaders that ‘every
significant Palestinian political and armed force is, for
the first time, now prepared to accept a de facto end to
conflict in return for a fully independent state on only 22%
of pre-1948 Palestine. This is unprecedented in the history
of the conflict.’ (‘Too late for two states?’,
24 Jan., Guardian website)
THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT FEARS A POLITICAL
HAMAS
It is this moderation that is the danger for Israeli leaders.
It is this moderation they are attempting to destroy through
force, including by the assassination of Sheikh Yassin.
‘There is a belief among some Hamas supporters that Israel
has targeted the organisation not because of its use of violence
but because some of its leaders, including Sheikh Yassin and
the pragmatic Ismail Abu Shanab, who was assassinated last year,
gave increasing weight to the political strategy.’ (Guardian,
24 Mar., p. 4)
Ghazi Hamedi, editor of the pro-Hamas newspaper
al-Resala, points out that, ‘Over the past two years, Hamas
has become more political. It agreed to an internal solution,
to a state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. That makes Sharon
very uncomfortable. He does not want Hamas playing a political
role.’ (Guardian, 24 Mar., p. 4)
By targeting Sheikh Yassin, and by now
targeting the entire Hamas leadership (Independent, 24
Mar., p. 1) Prime Minister Sharon is attacking not the military
capacity of Hamas, but the political capacity of Hamas.
STOKING THE FIRES OF TERRORISM
The Israeli Government understood that the assassination would
increase rather than decrease the military capacity of, and
threat from, Hamas: ‘All the terrorist organizations will
try and do their utmost to carry out attacks in coming days
and weeks,’ admitted Israel's chief military spokeswoman,
Brig. Gen. Ruth Yaron. (Washington Post, 23 Mar., p.
A01) At the security cabinet meeting which took the assassination
decision, ‘Avi Dichter, head of Shin Bet, the [Israeli]
intelligence organisation, said he expected a reaction... “They
will start with terror attacks overseas against Israelis. So
they will turn into al-Qaida. They will be in the whole world’s
sights.”’ (Guardian, 24 Mar., p. 4) These are
acceptable costs for Israeli leaders.
HAMAS-LAND IN GAZA
The real ‘danger’ for Sharon is not military, but
political. The problem is that the ‘extremists’ have
been developing worryingly ‘moderate’ tendencies recently.
For example their joint ceasefire declared in June 2003 which
ended after ‘Five Israeli missiles incinerate [moderate
Hamas leader] Ismail Abu Shanab in Gaza City yesterday, killing
one of the most powerful voices for peace in Hamas and destroying
the ceasefire that Palestinian leaders believed would avert
civil war.’ (Guardian website, 22 Aug. 2003)
Recently, ‘At the time of his death,
the Hamas spiritual leader had been negotiating with the leadership
of Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement in Gaza on administration
of the territory once the Israelis go. Both organisations
accepted that Hamas would play a political role, although
they disagreed as to what it would be.’ Diab Allouh, a
Fatah central committee member in Gaza City said, ‘Whatever
Sharon wants, Hamas will have to be part of any political settlement
in Gaza. We look to Hamas as a partner and we look to Hamas
to play a role on the ground in order to be part of the solution.’
(Guardian, 24 Mar., p. 4)
Israeli Army chief of staff Lieutenant
General Moshe Ya’alon said, ‘In the long run, the
assassination is likely to calm the situation in the Gaza Strip
and encourage moderate forces to prevent the founding of
“Hamas-land” in the Strip.’ (Independent,
24 Mar., p. 11)
‘Mr Arafat’s Palestinian Authority
still holds power in Gaza, controlling the Palestinian police
and security forces, but Hamas is fast winning hearts and minds
through its grassroots network of charities, mosques, welfare
and educational organisations. “Hamas has the general street
support in Gaza. If there were elections tomorrow, it would
win easily,” one Palestinian official said.’ (Times,
27 Mar., p. 24) This political strength is what frightens Sharon.
The assassination is designed to produce more terror, push Arafat
and Fatah into cracking down on Hamas, and to drive Hamas apart
from Fatah.
THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT FEARS PEACE
Israel’s justification for its 1982 invasion of Lebanon
was that a Palestinian terror group at war with the PLO, and
whose head (Abu Nidal) had been condemned to death by the PLO,
tried to assassinate Israel’s Ambassador to Britain. Israel
‘retaliated’ by bombing Palestinian and Lebanese targets
in Lebanon (where the Abu Nidal group did not even have an office),
including a four-hour bombardment of the Sabra and Shatila refugee
camps, killing over 200. Palestinian forces had for nine months
held to a US-negotiated ceasefire despite repeated Israeli provocations,
but they finally responded to this assault by shelling northern
Israeli settlements, giving Israel the pretext for a full-scale
invasion of Lebanon. (See Noam Chomsky, The Fateful Triangle,
s. 5.4.4)
Noam Chomsky points to the real reason
for the invasion, quoting Yehoshua Porath, one of Israel’s
leading scholars. Porath dismissed the official justifications,
and argued, ‘It seems to me that the decision of the government
(or more precisely its two leaders [Begin and Sharon] flowed
from the very fact that the cease-fire had been observed.’
Arafat had imposed discipline on the many PLO factions, creating
‘a veritable catastrophe in the eyes of the Israeli
government’, with the prospect that Israel would not be
able to avoid a political settlement. (Ha’aretz, 25 June
1982, cited in The Fateful Triangle)
Porath defined the purpose of the Begin/Sharon
invasion: ‘The government’s hope is that the stricken
PLO, lacking a logistic and territorial base, will return
to its earlier terrorism: it will carry out bombings throughout
the world, hijack airplanes, and murder many Israelis. In this
way, the PLO will lose part of the political legitimacy that
it has gained and will mobilize the large majority of the
Israeli nation in hatred and disgust against it’. (Cited
in The Fateful Triangle, chapter 4.6.1)
A senior Israeli military official
‘said Yassin’s death would likely prompt militant
organizations to conduct more joint operations against
Israelis.’ (Washington Post, 23 Mar, p. A01) The
Sharon administration hopes that Hamas and other groups will
devote themselves to wild terror, turn away from ceasefires
and a two-state solution, discredit themselves, and undermine
the possibility of any cooperation with Arafat’s Fatah
in governing ‘free Gaza’.
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