Los Angeles Times
NABLUS, West Bank — Tens of thousands of Palestinians marched through the streets of the West Bank and Gaza City on Saturday, vowing to kill Israelis to avenge the death of the military leader of the militant Hamas Islamic movement who died in an Israeli helicopter gunship attack.
Hamas threatened to exact a price from the Jewish state even before angry crowds turned out for the burials of Mahmoud Abu Hanoud and two assistants who died Friday night. The trio were killed by missiles fired at their car as they drove north of Nablus.
After night fell Saturday, an Israeli was killed and two were injured when Palestinians fired mortar shells and rockets at Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip. Although Palestinians have fired hundreds of mortar shells at settlements and at communities inside Israel’s pre-1967 borders since fighting began 14 months ago, this was the first time anyone was killed by one.
The bloodshed inflamed passions here on the eve of the arrival of U.S. envoys trying to halt the violence. More than 900 people, most of them Palestinians, have died since fighting erupted in September 2000.
Former Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni and Assistant Secretary of State William Burns will find each side blaming the other for the failure to achieve a cease-fire.
If experience is a guide, retaliation by Hanoud’s Islamic Hamas movement will be harsh and almost certainly will target Israeli civilians.
Each killing of a leader of Hamas or the equally radical Palestinian Islamic Jihad inspires a wave of volunteers eager to fight Israel and to kill Jews. The killings feed Palestinian anger and further radicalize the Palestinian public, which increasingly is convinced that Israel favors military might over negotiation.
Hamas, according to Palestinian sources, has not staged a major attack since Sept. 11, in part due to a political decision to obey Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat’s demands for calm after the terror attacks on the United States, and in part because attacks are getting harder to carry out due to increased security efforts.
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