Obituary
Ibrahim Makadmeh (1952-2003)
The price of freedom
Israel's assassination of Hamas political leader Ibrahim Al- Makadmeh in Gaza on 8 March appears to signal a turn for the worse in the confrontation that has raged since September 2000 between the Israeli army and Palestinian resistance groups.
Al-Makadmeh and three of his aides were killed Saturday morning in downtown Gaza when eyewitnesses said no fewer than three Israeli helicopters gunships fired up to five missiles at the car the four were travelling in, reducing it to a mass of twisted metal.
Announcing the assassination a few hours later, the Israeli army said Al-Makadmeh "deserved liquidation", accusing him of masterminding "terrorist activities" against Israeli soldiers and settlers. Islamists in Gaza dismissed Israeli allegations as "cheap lies", insisting that Al-Makadmeh was a political leader.
Al-Makadmeh, a father of seven children had devoted an increasing amount of his time in the months before his death to giving lectures and religious sermons in Gaza.
Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz declared on 9 March, that Israel would go after "other leaders" from Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Al-Makadmeh's funeral early this week drew tens of thousands of Gazans, some of whom called for revenge. Hamas said it would target Israeli political leaders in retaliation for the killing. Whether the organisation will be able to follow through on the threats is an open question, however, suicide bombings in Israel, like the one Hamas carried out in Haifa last week, killing 17 Israelis and wounding more than 30, would seem a more likely course of revenge for the organisation.
The assassination is also expected to push Hamas to distance itself from efforts by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Egypt to secure a one-year agreement among Palestinian resistance groups to desist from operations targeting Israeli civilians.
Al-Makadmeh was born in 1952, four years after his family was expelled from its village of Yibna, south-west of Jerusalem, when Israel was created.
Like hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, Al-Makadmeh and his family settled in a makeshift refugee camp, first at the Bureij Camp in central Gaza, and then at Jabalya, one of largest in the world.
The abject poverty and misery that Al-Makadmeh endured during his boyhood convinced him of the need to learn to rely on himself, say those who were close to him.
After graduating from secondary school in Jabalya, Al- Makadmeh studied dentistry in Egypt. There, like many students from other Arab countries, he discovered the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Upon returning to Gaza, Al-Makadmeh became active in the Palestinian Islamist movement. A few years later, he and Sheikh Ahmed Yassin cofounded the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, which later became one of Israel's most implacable foes.
In 1984, Al-Makadmeh was arrested by the Israeli army on charges of possessing and supplying arms to Palestinian guerrillas. He was sentenced to eight years in prison, during which he was repeatedly subjected to physical and psychological torture.
After his release from prison in 1992, Al-Makadmeh worked as dentist at the Shifa Hospital in Gaza, but continued to be active in Hamas. This didn't sit well with the newly-formed PA, whose security agencies arrested him several times. On one occasion, the PA Preventive Security Force detained him for three years without charging him or trying him. During that period he was reportedly tortured.
Al-Makadmeh was fiercely opposed to the Oslo Agreement, and said that it constituted a scandalous sell-out of Palestinian rights. His often vitriolic criticisms of PA corruption and cooperation with Israel invited harsh reprisals from PA security agencies. This intermittent persecution, which was only met by defiance on his part, continued until the outbreak of the Al- Aqsa Intifada in September 2000.
People who knew him, said Al-Makadmeh expected he would be killed because of his participation in the struggle for independence. According to his family, he said a few days before his death, "Our homeland will not be liberated and our people will not be freed from Jewish enslavement and occupation without sacrifices. Freedom has a price, and the price is blood."
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 13 - 19 March 2003 (Issue No. 629)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/629/re2.htm