Israel killed Hamas political leader Ismail Abu Shanab in a missile strike yesterday, two days after a suicide bombing in Jerusalem, and Islamic militant groups called off a seven-week-old old ceasefire.
The collapse of the truce, agreed by militant factions under international pressure, could sink a US-backed "road map" peace plan aimed at defusing a 34-month-old uprising and creating a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza by 2005.
Ismail Abu Shanab, a senior figure in Hamas's political wing with a high media profile, was killed along with two bodyguards when four missiles fired by helicopter gunships shattered his car as it drove through Gaza City, witnesses and medics said.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Israel had hours earlier approved tougher military action against the militants following the suicide bombing that killed 20 people on a Jerusalem bus on Tuesday, one of the bloodiest attacks in almost three years of conflict.
Hamas said it carried out the bus attack as retribution for the killing of members of the group, which is sworn to Israel's destruction, in Israeli army raids that have continued despite the truce.
Hamas swiftly vowed to avenge his death and another senior Hamas spokesman said the missile attack freed the group from its commitment to observing the unilateral truce with Israel.
"The assassination of Abu Shanab ... means that the Zionist enemy has assassinated the truce and the Hamas movement holds the Zionist enemy fully responsible for the consequences of its crime," Ismail al-Haniyah told reporters in Gaza.
Hamas's close ally Islamic Jihad also renounced the truce.
Reformist Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas called the missile attack "an ugly crime." Aides said it would trigger a relapse into tit-for-tat violence, thwarting peacemaking.
"Israel's continuation of this escalatory policy will ... weaken the Palestinian Authority's ability to restore calm and to move on to the political process," Information Minister Nabil Amr said in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
"This attack is irresponsible and takes us back to the cycle of violence which the Palestinian Authority is trying to avoid."
The ceasefire markedly reduced violence but was wobbly from the start on June 29. Some militant cells, including within Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, rejected it and continued sporadic attacks on Israelis.
But until yesterday militant faction spokesmen had insisted the truce remained in force and said three suicide bombings since Aug. 12 were solely one-off reprisals for Israeli army raids that netted or killed a handful of wanted men.
Earlier yesterday, the Israeli army swept into the West Bank cities of Jenin and Nablus and arrested several wanted Palestinian militants, a military spokesman said.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's security Cabinet said in a statement after overnight deliberations that no progress on the road map was conceivable unless Palestinian authorities took action against militant factions behind attacks -- as the peace plan requires.
"If the Palestinian government does not take all necessary steps in the war on terror -- real and substantive steps -- it will not be possible to move to the stage of diplomatic talks," it said.
Abbas's Cabinet, which also met overnight, vowed to enforce compliance by all Palestinians with "one authority and rule of law."
Israeli security sources said Abu Shanab was targeted because he was involved in planning militant attacks.
The Palestinian Authority and independent analysts had considered Abu Shanab among the few relative moderates in Hamas. He joined several rounds of dialogue between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority on the ceasefire with Israel.
The death toll from Tuesday's suicide bombing on a Jerusalem bus packed with ultra-Orthodox Jews rose to 20 yesterday after one person died in hospital and another's remains were identified from DNA checks, Israeli police said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese