Hamas vows revenge as Israel targets leadership

An Israeli Cabinet minister called today for the assassination of the exiled Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal as Israel stepped up its air campaign in the Gaza Strip.

Thousands of Hamas supporters took to the streets of Gaza City, gunmen firing into the air, vowing to venge an air strike on the house of a Hamas politician in which eight people were killed last night.

The MP, Khalil al-Haya, was not wounded in last night's attack although he said that he had lost seven family members in the attack. Hamas said that only two of those killed were militants, while Israel insisted that the attack had targeted a group of five armed men.

Israeli warplanes continued their attacks this morning, following a decision by Israel's Security Cabinet yesterday to escalate the air campaign, focusing on Gaza and the Islamic Jihad, but to stop short of a ground offensive.

At least four Islamic Jihad militants were killed in an air strike that destroyed their car near the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya, local residents and medical workers said. One man was killed in an earlier attack on what Israel called a rocket manufacturing facility and what Palestinians described as a stone mason’s shop. The air strikes also knocked out electricity to about 50,000 people.

Hamas, which last carried out a suicide bombing in Israel in 2004, threatened to respond to last night's deadly attack with “an earthquake” against the Jewish state. “The response will be as big as the Zionist crimes,” Abu Ubaida, the Hamas armed wing spokesman, said as mourners carried the bodies of the eight dead, wrapped in green Hamas flags, during a funeral procession.

Israel’s internal security minister, Avi Dichter, said Mr Meshaal, the exiled Hamas leader whom Israel tried to assassinate in Jordan in 1997, would not be “immune” to attack. “Khaled Meshaal isn’t immune, not in Damascus and not anywhere else. I’m convinced that at the first opportunity, we will bid him farewell,” he told Army Radio. Mr Dichter also said that the Palestinian Prime Minister, Ismail Haniya, a Hamas leader who lives in Gaza, could be targeted should he become involved in ordering rocket fire.

Sonia Verma, the Times Correspondent in Israel, said that Mr Dichter was considered to be a rightwinger on the Security Cabinet but his intervention was significant and had sent Hamas leaders scurrying for cover. "What he's saying is that it's open season on both the military and political leaders, that there's no distinction between the two," she said. "But nobody really knows how Israel is going to follow through on this threat."

Israel resumed its airstrikes in Gaza last week in response to increased Palestinian rocket fire at southern Israeli towns. The airstrikes have killed 36 Palestinians, most of them Hamas militants.

The airstrikes have also helped cement a truce between Hamas and the rival Fatah faction that began to take hold after a week of intense violence in which 50 people were killed. “No one would condone fighting one another while the Israelis are shelling Gaza,” said Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman.

Mr Barhoum said that the attack was a sign that Israel is targeting “everyone - civilians and leaders”.

Meanwhile, Richard Jones, the US Ambassador to Israel, gave a boost of support to the Israeli campaign, but urged Israel to do its best to avoid harming civilians.

“We constantly urge Israel to target its response as closely as possible at those who are responsible for the actions, and to avoid innocent collateral damage,” Mr Jones told an academic conference.

“I don’t think that we urge restraint, but we do urge people to be very clear that they’re focused on those who are actually responsible for acts of terror against Israel.”

Israel’s attacks have so far been restricted to the Gaza Strip so far. But in a sign of a possible crackdown in the West Bank, Israeli troops raided two radio stations and one TV channel identified with Hamas this morning in the city of Nablus, along with two independent TV stations.

The troops confiscated equipment and videotapes, workers at the stations said, and all five went off the air. The army had no immediate comment.

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