GAZA, 18 April 2003 — The founder of Palestinian resistance group Hamas said yesterday the arrest of a Palestinian activist leader in Iraq suggested US forces were now targeting leaders of a Palestinian uprising against Israel. “It (arrest of Abu Abbas) indicates that America is sinking its sharp teeth into Iraq and into Palestine,” Sheikh Ahmed Yassin said. “It is a crusader’s war against both. But it will be defeated. Our people are stronger than Israel and America,” the wheelchair-bound Yassin said as 2,000 Palestinians marched to mark Palestinian Prisoner Day.
Abbas, seized by US forces who toppled Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in an invasion this month, masterminded the 1985 hijacking of a Mediterranean cruise ship in which an American Jewish passenger was shot and thrown overboard.
But Abbas later renounced violence and had lived mainly in Baghdad for the last 17 years. His small Palestine Liberation Front group has played almost no role in the independence uprising begun in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip in September 2000. The United States hailed Abbas’ capture earlier this week as a victory in its declared war on terrorism and proof that Saddam had links to “terrorist” groups.
Some Palestinians now fear his arrest could herald a campaign by the United States, Israel’s guardian ally, to round up Palestinian leaders connected with violence as part of the war on terror. “Let them arrest the whole Palestinian people. Resistance will never stop. We will continue jihad and resistance,” Yassin said.
“Whether we go to prison or whether they kill leaders, resistance will never stop before the liberation,” he added.
Hamas has spearheaded the uprising and is on a US list of terrorist organizations. Saddam donated more than $25 million to families of dead Hamas bombers and other activists killed fighting Israel. President Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority has called on the United States to release Abbas, saying his detention violated terms of US-mediated interim peace deals signed with Israel in 1995.
US officials said Abbas did not have immunity under that accord as he was arrested in a third country. Washington had dropped a warrant for his arrest several years ago. Protest marchers held up posters of detained relatives and Abbas and Marwan Barghouthi, a leader of Arafat’s Fatah faction.
Barghouthi is now on trial in Israel over militant killings of Israelis which he denies any part in. Palestinian officials say Israel has jailed some 8,000 Palestinians arrested by troops in the conflict. Many remain in detention without charge, human rights groups say.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine also condemned as an act of “terror” the arrest of Abu Abbas and demanded his release. “The United States’ message behind the arrest of Abu Abbas is terrorizing (Arabs) and imposing its will on them,” PFLP political office member Marwan Abou Sami told Reuters in Damascus.
“It is an illegal arrest and he should be released immediately. The United States and the Zionist enemy (Israel) did not object when he was present at an event that was attended by (former US President Bill) Clinton,” he said.
“Since the infamous Oslo Peace Accords Israel agreed that any so-called terrorist activity that took place before the agreement is to be regarded as a bygone,” said Abou Sami, whose Damascus-based faction does not recognize Palestinian-Israeli peace arrangements.
Meanwhile, Israeli troops enforcing a curfew on Palestinians during the Jewish Passover holiday killed a young Palestinian man in the West Bank city of Tulkarm yesterday, Palestinian witnesses and medics said. They said Yusuf Yahya, 21, was shot several times after being spotted on a Tulkarm street by Israeli forces. They said Yahya had no connection with Palestinian activists fighting against Israel for independence since September 2000.
An Israeli Army spokesman said the man was shot after he threw two petrol bombs at patrolling troops and as he was preparing to light up a third. Military sources said later five wanted Palestinians had been arrested in Tulkarm after which the curfew was lifted and troops withdrew to the city’s outskirts.
For the Passover period Israel imposed a general closure on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, banning Palestinian travel within and in and out of the territories, with curfews in some places, following warnings of attacks planned by militants. Palestinians call such measures collective punishment.
Last year, a bomber from Tulkarm killed 29 people at an Israeli seaside hotel just 15 km to the west as guests were sitting down to a traditional Passover “seder” meal. It was the deadliest Palestinian attack inside Israel since the start 30 months ago of a Palestinian uprising for statehood. That bombing prompted Israel to reoccupy West Bank cities granted self-rule a decade ago under interim peace deals since eclipsed by the violence.
