UNITED NATIONS, 20 April 2004 — The UN Security Council, at the request of Arab nations, set an emergency public meeting on the Middle East yesterday following Israel’s assassination of a top Hamas leader and a major policy shift by US President George W. Bush.
Arab nations also planned to ask the 15-nation council to adopt a resolution condemning Israel’s killing on Saturday of Hamas leader Abdelaziz Al-Rantissi, Arab League envoy Yahya Mahmassani told Reuters. But a text was not yet drafted, Arab diplomats said.
The United States three weeks ago vetoed a similar resolution that sought to condemn Israel for assassinating Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin. The Bush administration voted against that resolution on March 25, arguing it should also denounce Yassin’s group Hamas for suicide bombings in Israel.
Because of the veto power it enjoys as one of the five permanent members of the council, Washington was able to kill the measure although it was the sole “no” vote.
The council, in closed consultations, agreed to schedule an open session for 3 p.m. (1900 GMT), at which UN members would be able to speak out on the latest Middle East developments.
Bush infuriated Arab leaders last week by breaking with decades of US policy to announce that Israel would retain some of the West Bank land it captured in the 1967 Middle East War. He also rejected any right of return of Palestinian refugees to what is now Israel.
Palestinian officials said the US shift had doomed the internationally backed road map peace plan that aims for a Middle East peace deal and a Palestinian state by next year. Rantissi died after an Israeli helicopter fired two missiles at a car in the Gaza Strip. Hamas has threatened 100 revenge attacks. A spokesman for UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan issued a statement late on Saturday reiterating the UN leader’s view that such “extrajudicial killings” by Israel violate international law.
Hamas may have vowed to wreak bloody havoc after Israel’s killing of Rantissi, but with two of its leaders wiped out in less than a month and still no response in sight, many questions remain about the radical movement’s ability to strike back.
So far Hamas has not succeeded in pulling off any large-scale attack against Israel, raising questions about its strike capabilities. “With the attack on Yassin, and now on Rantissi, Hamas has been severely weakened,” Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said on Sunday, echoing comments made last month by a senior Israeli intelligence official.
“We have hit Hamas in the past months so hard that they have not had time to return to the business,” he told reporters in Jerusalem.
But Hamas officials attending the three-day mourning ceremony for Rantissi in Gaza poured cold water on the claim, warning Israel that the response would materialize as and when the movement sees fit.
“If the Zionists think that Hamas is weak, just let them live in their illusion,” top Hamas official Ismail Haniya told AFP, saying the response would be handled by the movement’s military wing, the Ezzedin El-Qassam Brigades.
“Hamas will respond after a suitable time,” said Saied Siam, another top official in the movement who was present at the mourning tent in Gaza’s Al-Yarmuk stadium.
Rantissi saw his wife and children for the first time in months just hours before he was assassinated by Israel, his widow said yesterday. “He came to us a few hours before his martyrdom,” said Rasha Al-Rantissi, ringed by people who had come to pay condolences at a traditional mourning tent at the family’s Gaza City home. “We had some wonderful hours... It was his only visit during the period of security precautions that he lived through.”
Rantissi’s brothers yesterday received condolences from around 200 people in a tent decked out with Palestinian flags on the outskirts of the Jordanian capital of Amman. The Jordanian government, which has denounced the assassination, allowed one of his brothers, Hassan, to leave a refugee camp near the border with Iraq to attend the event.
