Hamas terror kingpin Mohammad Deif was hit by an Israeli missile today. The IDF initially said that they believe Deif was killed, but had no conclusive proof. As of this hour their assessment is that he was merely wounded. Hamas maintains that Deif was only moderately wounded. Hamas made similar denials in the first hours after Deif's predecessor Salah Shehadeh was killed in July. (And the Soviet Union said that Brezhnev, Chernenko and Andropov all had colds after their hearts had stopped beating).
Most people in the English speaking world learned of the attack on Deif from Reuters Gaza correspondent Nidal al Mughrabi, who was careful to point out that "Palestinian hospital officials said 15 of 27 people wounded were civilians under age 18, three of them small children. Six people were in critical condition, they said." <irony>And Palestinian sources are always scrupulously reliable about casualty figures, aren't they?</irony> We also learn that Palestinians say the tactic [of killing terrorist commanders] is state-sponsored assassination and it has been condemned abroad.
But the Reuters story chooses not to ask, let alone answer, the crucial question of "why did Israel want to whack this sumbitch in the first place?" For this we need to turn to Ha'aretz, which says that
The Shin Bet security service has been trying to nab Mohammed Def for nearly ten years...Deif has been considered to head both the Hamas military wing and Israel's most wanted list [for his] involvement in a number of terror attacks, dating back to suicide bus bombings in 1995 and 1996 .... Def managed to avoid arrest during most of the period when the Palestinian security establishment was pursuing and arresting Hamas activists from 1996-2000. Some attribute this to his connections with Dahlan.
Ma'ariv(Hebrew only) says that Deif personally assembled some of the bombs used in certain bus attacks in the mid-90s. The paper claims that he actually was arrested by the PA sometime after 1996, but was released in mid-2000 under Arafat's personal instructions.
It's fair to assume that one of Ha'aretz and Ma'ariv got the details right and he was either arrested briefly and released or not arrested at all. Either way, the PA had the opportunity to put the lid on this mass murderer and they chose not to act. Which is just one more demonstration why the PA has never been a credible partner for peace and should be obliterated along with the Hamas. Naturally, the outrage of the world will only be directed against Israel, and not against either Hamas or the PA's calculated inaction with respect to the Hamas.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at September 26, 2002 02:33 PM