Tel Aviv - Top Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal is a target for
assassination by Israel 'at the earliest opportunity,' an Israeli
cabinet minister said Monday.
'I am convinced that they (Israel) will part from him at the
earliest opportunity, even though the complexity, the sensitivity and
the fact that he isn't here on the other side of the (West Bank
security) fence obviously make things a lot more difficult,' Internal
Security Minister Avi Dichter said.
'Khaled Mashaal is certainly not immune, not in Damascus and not
in any other place,' he told Israel Army Radio.
'Naturally, all the political and operational sensitivities must
be taken into account,' he said, but added, 'He knows himself that he
is not immune.'
Mashaal's deputy in Damascus, Moussa Abu Marzouk, dubbed the
announcement 'cowardly.'
'This Israeli policy is cowardly and the entire world should stand
against it,' he told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa by telephone.
Marzouk said that the policy was not new, and that Israel had
already 'assassinated tens of Palestinian leaders outside the
Palestinian lands.'
As the head of Hamas' political bureau based in Damascus, Mashaal
is considered the most senior leader of the ruling, radical Islamic
Palestinian movement abroad.
Mashaal survived an Israeli assassination attempt a decade ago.
In September 1997, two agents of Israel's Mossad intelligence
agency followed him in Amman and injected him with poison, but the
two were caught in a chase, sparking an embarrassing international
scandal which forced then premier Benjamin Netanyahu to hand over an
antidote to the Jordanian authorities.
'We already (tried to) part from him once. He knows the
procedure,' Dichter said of Mashaal.
He added that Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya would also
be a target if Israel had evidence that he ordered the rocket attacks
against it.
'If Ismail Haniya is counted among the echelon that orders the
continuation of attacks, he certainly is a worthy target,' he said,
but added, 'I don't know if he is among those who give the
instructions.'
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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