War crime in Gaza

national | miscellaneous | news report Saturday July 27, 2002 02:12 by McMean

"It was one of our greatest successes", claimed Ariel Sharon, after Tuesday's air-raid during which Hamas leader Saleh Shahade and 16 others were killed when an F-16 fighter dropped a two-ton bomb in the Mashahreh district of Gaza City.

The intended target was considered the head of Ezzedin al Kassam,
the armed wing of the Islamic movement Hamas. "The IDF regrets
the damage done to property or people but this is the result of
terrorism, as they use civilians as human shields,"was the
Israeli Army's curt response to the slaughter it had caused.

Shahade's wife, their three children and a bodyguard were killed
by the huge explosion which flattened a dozen houses. The bodies
of two infants and four children under the age of ten as well as
three adults were initially retrieved from the all familiar piles
of rubble the IDF has created throughout the Occupied
Territories.

Even the Israeli President, Moshe Katsav, was moved to issue a
statement deploring the raid, although there was no such
squeamishness from Ariel Sharon. He appeared elated at the
elimination of a man regarded by the Israelis as the first among
48 names of "most wanted terrorists". And it doesn't matter how
many civilians, in particular children, will have to be
sacrificed and murdered.

Palestinian children are killed daily as a political and military
deterrent but the news barely reaches the papers. Children of a
lesser God, second class human beings on their own land, killed
by the Israeli war machine (20% of the 1,600 Palestinians killed
in the Intifada are under the age of 16) or by the apartheid
(lack of food, water and medical supplies) imposed on them by
Sharon.

The timing of the Gaza attack was crucial and forms part of the
Israeli premier's plan for the annexation of the Territories.
Hundreds of Islamic militants have been "removed" in an open
campaign of extra-judicial executions since September 2000. With
total impunity. Shahade's killing purposely breaks three weeks of
a relative calm and shatters any prospect of progress.
Palestinian and Israeli officials had just resumed premiliminary
peace-talks and only last Sunday Ahmed Yassin, the charismatic
leader of Hamas, had suggested that in the event of an Israeli
withdrawal from the Territories, the movement may decide to
suspend the suicide-bombers' attacks in Israel. But each time
there's a new chance of a political approach, Sharon sheds
Palestinian blood to prevent it.

In a rare appearance in Gaza only a few weeks ago, Shehade had
reiterated his position: "We don't fight the Jews because they
are Jews but because they occupy our land. Not for their religion
but because they have stripped us all of every right". Regarded
as an intellectual, founder of the Izzedin al Kassam Brigades and
strong supporter of the martyrs campaign, Shehade was also the
leader of a rational current within his movement.

Although he was one of the strongest opponents of the peace and
stability approach of Yasser Arafat, he was also willing to go an
extra mile. He had also a political mindset - that's why he was
feared by his enemies. That's why so many martyrs will now try to
avenge his death.