The Israeli army claims that Salah Darwazeh, the Hamas resistance leader its forces assassinated on Tuesday, was “planning a major terrorist attack,” according to reports.
"An Israeli unit carried out an attack today against Salah Darwazeh, a major Hamas terrorist who was a member of the movement's leadership in Nablus," an army statement said, cited by AFP and Haaretz newspaper.
The army said Darwazeh was planning "a large-scale attack against Israeli citizens in Israeli territory."
There were conflicting reports on how the assassination was carried out.
By one account, Darwazeh, 37, was killed when his car was hit by tank shells fired from an Israeli military post on a Mount Ebal on the outskirts of the Palestinian-ruled town.
Palestinian sources, cited by Haaretz, said an Israeli helicopter fired two missiles, with one striking the car and the second a Palestinian security check-post.
The post was completely destroyed, but no casualties were reported.
Israel’s assassination policy has claimed the lives of 42 resistance activists since the September 2000 eruption of the latest Palestinian uprising against 34 years of Israeli military occupation.
Earlier Wednesday, Israel returned to the Palestinian Authority the bodies of two Hamas activists killed at the beginning of the month in shooting clashes between the Israeli troops and armed Palestinians in Jenin, Haaretz said.
The media has reported that Palestinians have killed at least 125 Israelis with weapons ranging from stones and knives to machineguns and car bombs. Israeli military sources have reported well over 600 injuries to Israelis of Jewish descent.
In the same time period, according to the UK newspaper The Guardian, Israeli soldiers and armed Jewish settlers have killed 13 Arab Israelis and 510 Palestinians with weapons ranging from machineguns and tanks to US-made Apache helicopter gunships and F-16s.
According to an Amnesty International report, nearly 100 of the Palestinians killed were children. In addition, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society has reported over 14,000 Palestinians wounded.
Jewish author Noam Chomsky, who according to a New York Times Book Review article is “arguably the most important intellectual alive,” has been quoted as saying: “State terrorism is an extreme form of terrorism, generally much worse than individual terrorism because it has the resources of a state behind it.” – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
