CAIRO, 26 September 2004 — Seven years ago yesterday, Khaled Mishaal, whose Palestinian militant group sends suicide bombers into Israel, lay dying in a Jordanian hospital after Israeli intelligence agents sprayed him with poison on an Amman street.

Jordan’s King Hussein intervened, forcing Israel to send the antidote that saved the Hamas leader’s life and release the group’s jailed founder in exchange for the freedom of its captured agents. Today, Israel is after Mishaal again.

“We are in a state of alert and vigilance,” he told the Associated Press this week during an unannounced visit to Cairo from his home base in the Syrian capital, Damascus.

Mishaal surfaced in the Egyptian capital after dropping out of sight in Damascus shortly after his group blew up two buses on Aug. 31 in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba.

The double suicide bombing, which killed 16 Israelis, was the deadliest in Israel in nearly a year. Hamas officials say all such attacks are planned and carried out by operatives in the Palestinian territories. But Israel says the attack was carried out on direct orders from Hamas leaders in Damascus and has repeatedly warned that it intends to go after them. It has also hinted it might retaliate against Syria for harboring the group’s leadership.

Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom has said Syria’s support for terrorists “will have very clear consequences.”

Last October, Israeli warplanes struck the Damascus-area training camp of another militant group, Islamic Jihad, a day after a suicide bomber blew up a restaurant in the Israeli port city of Haifa, killing 21 people. In March, Israel assassinated the crippled, elderly Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin in the Gaza Strip.

Mishaal was in Cairo for talks with Egyptian officials about an anticipated Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. The 48-year-old former physics professor, who heads the Hamas political bureau, emerged as the group’s leader after Yassin’s assassination.

Hamas insists its political wing and military wing function separately and that while its political leaders support the offensive, they are not directly involved in attacks.

While he refused to discuss security, Hamas leaders in Damascus are clearly taking no chances, constantly moving from one safe house to another.

Reaching them, once possible with a knock on the door or phone call, has become a cloak-and-dagger affair mediated by aides and requiring long drives and detours to secret locations.

“We are taking all the necessary security precautions because we face a vicious and vile enemy which practices its open terrorism openly against us, inside and outside (the Palestinian territories), on the political leadership and the public alike without exception,” Mishaal said.

He would not say where he was going after his trip to Cairo. But he confirmed that Syria is under fresh pressure from the United States to close down the Hamas offices in Damascus and expel the leaders.

Washington considers Hamas a terrorist organization. Damascus has curtailed the activities of its Palestinian guests, but refuses to expel them, arguing they have nowhere to go as long as Israel occupies their land.

After Israel’s 1997 attempt on Mishaal’s life, Jordan’s relationship with Hamas deteriorated and Mishaal was expelled to Qatar, where he lived for a time before moving to Damascus.

Mishaal insisted his group’s main base is in the Palestinian territories. “It is wrong to think that Hamas has an address in a specific Arab capital ... it is present in many capitals and has representatives and is widely active in the Arab world,” he said.

“I am speaking to you in Cairo, and I could talk to you in another Arab country. This is our natural right. The Palestinian people (are) spread out in all Arab regions.”

But he said Hamas understands the difficulties some countries face. Washington recently imposed sanctions on Syria for allegedly supporting terrorism. The sanctions ban all US exports to Syria except food and medicine and forbid flights between the country and the United States.

Asked whether Hamas continues to operate from Syria or had been forced to keep silent to deflect the pressure, he replied without elaboration: “We are aware of the complicated situation in the conflict. We deal with each stage accordingly.”