- CAIRO (IslamOnline.net) --
An Arab country has recently arrested a terrorist cell affiliated to the
Israeli intelligence (Mossad) which was plotting to liquidate senior Hamas
political leaders abroad, including the head of the movement politburo
Khaled Mashal, a senior Hamas official confirmed Tuesday, September 30.
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- In exclusive statements to IslamOnline.net over the phone,
Mohammad Nazal, himself a member of Hamas politburo, said officials in
the said Arab country, which he declined to name, notified the movement
leaders they must take utmost precautionary measures in their movements.
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- Because of watertight security measures for his own protection,
Mashal has recently refrained from talking to the media or taking part
in political activities, he elaborated.
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- "Israel is still adamant on its policy of assassinating
Hamas leaders in and outside Palestine but the movement has been able to
thwart such schemes by adopting strict security measures," Nazal asserted.
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- Media reports suggest that Mashal, who moves among a
number of Arab countries, was last seen in Qatar.
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- The Israeli occupation forces had recently stepped up
its assassination campaign against the political and military leaders of
the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas.
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- On June 10 Israel carried out a failed assassination
attempt on the life of prominent Hamas political leader, Abdelaziz al-Rantissi.
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- On Thursday, August 21, Israel liquidated prominent Hamas
political leader Ismail Abu Shanab, killing stone dead the unilateral truce
declared by the main Palestinian resistance factions on June 29.
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- Crossing all red lines, Israeli forces tried on September
6 to assassinate Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and key political
leader Ismail Haneya.
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- Few days later, Israeli F-16s dropped a several-ton bomb
at the house of Hamas political leader Mahmoud Al-Zahar in a densely-populated
Gaza City neighborhood, killing two people, including his eldest son Khaled.
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- According to an Israeli research center, Israel carried
out 135 assassinations until May 2003, killing 249 members of various Palestinian
resistance factions.
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- Some 105 Palestinians, including 35 children, also died
in the Israeli operations which left 500 more wounded.
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- The most prominent of those assassinated by Israel was
Abu Ali Mustafa, the secretary general of the Popular Front for the Liberation
of Palestine (PFLP), who was targeted by an Israeli Apache helicopter gunships
in the West Bank city of Ramallah on August 27, 2001.
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- On July 22, 2002, Israeli F16 warplanes shelled the house
of Salah Shehada, head of the Hamas military wing in Gaza city, killing
him with 15 civilians in one of the fiercest Israeli attacks.
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- On the second year of Aqsa Intifada, from 29 September
2001 to 29 September 2002, Israel killed 113 Palestinians in 15 assassination
attacks.
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- In the last seven months of the Intifada, 83 Palestinian
activists were killed - along with dozen others who happened to be on the
scenes, in 43 Israeli assassinations.
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- On Tuesday, May 6, a Palestinian official said Palestinians
foiled an assassination attempt on the life of President Yasser Arafat
by a poisonous substance.
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- The assassination policy was derided by many critics
as "war crimes" under international law, and disapproved by not
a small number of Israelis.
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- A poll published on June 13 found that two-thirds of
Israelis want a halt to Israel's practice of "targeted killings"
of Palestinian activists, a coined Israeli term for assassination.
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- http://www.islamonline.net/English/News/2003-09/30/article09.shtml
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