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July 26, 2002/Av 17 5762, Vol. 54, No. 45
Hamas commander directed terror network
GIL SEDAN
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
JERUSALEM - The airstrike that killed Israel's most-wanted terrorist in Gaza this week has ignited an international outcry, including a rare U.S. condemnation of the Jewish state.
Salah Shehada, the commander of Hamas' military wing in the Gaza Strip, was the mastermind behind hundreds of terror attacks against Israelis, Israeli officials said.
Killed along with 14 civilians in an airstrike in the early morning of July 23, Shehada directed a terror network with members in the West Bank and Gaza that also included operatives abroad, particularly in Syria.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer on July 23 criticized the "loss of innocent life" and criticized Israel for "a deliberate attack against a building where civilians were known to be located."
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Israel was "sorry" about the civilian deaths, but called the elimination of Shehada "a great success."
E.U. foreign policy advisor Javier Solana blasted the Israeli attack, while Britain's Foreign Office called the strike "unacceptable and counterproductive."
A founder of Izz a-Din al-Kassam, as the Hamas military wing is known, Shehada was second only to Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas, and was considered the ailing Yassin's likely successor.
According to Israeli officials, Shehada had formulated Hamas' policy of terrorism against Israelis. He recruited and dispatched suicide bombers and decided which Israeli communities to target, and was the driving force behind development of the Palestinians' Kassam missiles, the officials said.
In a May interview with the Web site "Islam Online," Shehada detailed some of the planning behind suicide attacks, or what Hamas calls "martyrdom acts."
Shehada also said the "stream" of young Palestinians who want to become suicide bombers reflects a state of "health" and "awareness" in Palestinian society, "and is not a mistake or an escape from a situation of despair or frustration."
Shehada, 50, was born in the Shati refugee camp just north of Gaza City. His family had fled from Jaffa during Israel's 1948 War of Independence.
According to Israeli officials, Shehada was responsible for a number of major terror attacks, including the June 2001 suicide bombing at a Tel Aviv beachside disco; the August 2001 suicide bombing at a Jerusalem pizzeria; the March 2002 bombing of Caf‚ Moment in Jerusalem; and the "Passover Massacre" last March at a seder in a Netanya hotel, where a suicide bomber killed 29 people and wounded more than 100.
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