Endgame begins

Sharon's attempt to prevent Hamas becoming the dominant force in Gaza has backfired spectacularly, writes Graham Usher from Jerusalem

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Like an echo, a sea of faces of Shiekh Ahmed Yassin emerges in the wake of his killing. "We are all Ahmed Yassins!" A "V for victory" sign penetrates the surface, evoking Palestinian defiance in the face of Israeli atrocities

Four days after Israeli helicopter gunships killed Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and seven other Palestinians in Gaza City, Israel and Palestine have the feel of nations teetering on the brink of an earthquake. In the immediate aftermath the Israeli army slapped a draconian closure on the occupied territories and maintained the highest security alert throughout Israel. In their blockaded towns, villages and refugee camps Palestinians observed three days of mourning and strikes in which the rich neighbourhoods of Ramallah were shuttered every bit as tightly as the barrios in Gaza.

All are waiting the next move in the "open war" declared between Hamas and the Israeli government. It may be another assassination, a suicide attack or something worse. The only certainly is that this endgame is not over, that -- in some ways -- it may be only beginning.

Some preliminary steps have already been taken. On Tuesday Hamas announced before a packed crowd at Gaza's Yarmouk football stadium that Aziz Rantisi would be Yassin's heir on the "domestic" front against Israel. The external front -- representing Hamas outside the occupied territories -- will remain under the sway of Khaled Mishal, head of Hamas's political bureau. This suggests unity will be preserved between the two main wings of the movement, at least for now. It is a unity bound by the vow Rantisi made to his people in Yamouk.

Neither Ariel Sharon nor any other Israeli leader "will feel safety or security", he said. "We will fight them everywhere. We will hit them everywhere. We will chase them everywhere. We will teach them lessons in confrontation."

Israel's decision to kill the founder leader of Hamas and declare open season on the movements other leaders is a pre-emptive policy as much as a retaliatory one, whatever the reams of statistics given to journalists supposedly showing how Yassin was "directly responsible" for hundreds of attacks in the last three years.

It is apparently born of Sharon's stated decision for Israel to unilaterally withdraw its soldiers and settlers from most of Gaza and of the need to wipe out Hamas as a political, military and social movement before the evacuation takes place. The aim clearly is that Hamas must not be seen to have vanquished Israel in Gaza the way Hizbullah defeated it in south Lebanon. This at least was the justification given by Israel's chief of staff, Moshe Yaalon.

"Even if in the short run the assassination increases the motivation to carry out terror attacks, in the long run the assassination is likely to calm the situation in the Gaza Strip and encourage moderate forces to prevent the founding of 'Hamas- land' in the Strip," he explained.

It seems a distant prospect. Never have the occupied territories and the region looked more like Hamas-land than they did in the wake of Yassin's death. On news of the assassination tens of thousands of Gazans streamed to the mosque where he was hit, thence to the hospital where his corpse was taken, thence to the cemetery where he was buried.

Smaller but no less spontaneous demonstrations erupted in Nablus, Jenin, Hebron, Bethlehem, Khan Yunis, Qalqiliya and Ramallah. There were also solidarity marches and rallies in Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Sudan and on Israel's border with Lebanon -- always a good gauge of the region's temper -- skirmishes flared between the Israeli army and Hizbullah guerrillas, leaving two Palestinians dead on Tuesday.

As for the official Palestinian leadership, it remained cloistered in its battered Ramallah headquarters, assailed by Palestinians outraged by the failure to do anything other than issue condemnations of the "brutal Israeli crime". Yasser Arafat mourned Yassin as "an heroic warrior and leader", urged Palestinians to "close ranks to avoid playing into the hands of Sharon and the occupation army" and received visitors offering condolences. He then retired to an inner sanctum in the compound, steered by guards fearful that, after Yassin, his turn would be next, a threat Israeli government and army leaders have done very little to dispel.

The Palestinian leader's sense of isolation was heightened because he knows Palestinian ranks are closing -- but no longer behind him and the "strategic choice" of peace he advocates. They are closing behind the memory of Yassin and the future heralded by Rantisi and the strategic choice of resistance to occupation they have always posited as the alternative to a negotiated solution. In the wake of the assassination virtually every Palestinian faction and militia -- nationalist or Islamist, secular or religious -- spoke finally in one voice.

"Today Sharon delivered the coup de grace to the so-called peace process," said Fatah West Bank leader Hussein El-Sheikh. "All the Palestinian factions must now unite to fight against Israel".

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See:
Focus: Ahmed Yassin