Will killing Hamas leader relieve pressure on Israel?
Chances of a rapid halt to Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip dimmed after Israel killed a Hamas leader and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said her nation would keep applying pressure to the militant Islamic group.Since Israel has been resisting pressure to declare a cease fire, the killing of the Hamas leader should serve Israel's interest shouldn't it?“The only way to see a change in the region is to help the moderates, but simultaneously to attack and to keep the pressure on the extremists like Hamas,” Livni told reporters in Paris following a meeting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
As diplomatic efforts to end the conflict faltered, Israel continued its bombardment of Hamas targets in the coastal enclave while the Islamic group continued to fire rockets into Israel, hitting an apartment building in Ashdod, Israel’s second-largest port city. Israeli troops and tanks remained massed on the Gaza border.
For the first time since the start of the aerial bombardment Dec. 27, Israel yesterday killed a senior Hamas leader in an air strike. An army spokesman, speaking anonymously in accordance with regulations, said warplanes hit Nizar Rayyan’s house in the Jabaliya refugee camp. Several members of his family were also killed, the head of Palestinian emergency services, Mu’awia Hassanein, said by telephone.
“Israel is mistaken if it thinks that by killing Hamas leaders it will put an end to the group,” Mkhaimar Abusada, a professor of political science at Al-Azhar University in Gaza, said in a telephone interview. “Hamas is a movement that has the support of 35 to 40 percent of the Palestinian people.”
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Killing senior Hamas officials should make it more difficult for Hamas to exercise command and control over its war effort. Whenever there is a death in the Hamas leadership there is a net gain for Israel. It may not be persuasive to all of Hamas, but at some point the leadership has to think about its own survival if it wants the group to survive.
CNN reports:
...The secondary explosion suggest Hamas was using civilian homes for weapons storage and that Rayan was using his family as human shields.The Israeli Defense Forces said Rayan was behind a 2004 suicide bombing in Ashdod, in which 10 Israelis were killed, and an October 2001 suicide mission in a Jewish settlement in Gaza that his son carried out. Two Israelis were killed in that mission, the military said.
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The Israelis would not say whether they were specifically targeting Rayan in the assault. The bombing touched off secondary explosions from munitions and weapons stored in the home, Haaretz reported.
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I have a hard time believing that this will end the conflict. Rayyan didn't appear to really call a lot of shots, but instead was a sort of religious head. I don't know how big his decision-making powers were.
ReplyDeleteIn my heart, I hope that this will end the conflict though. It would be nice.