Hamas leader vows to continue fight against Israel

GAZA- Wounded Hamas leader Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi vowed after surviving an Israeli attempt to kill him on Tuesday that the Palestinian militant group would continue to attack Israel until every last "Zionist" was gone.

"We will maintain our jihad (holy war) and resistance until we kick out every single criminal Zionist from our land," he told al-Jazeera television by telephone from a hospital following the helicopter missile attack on his car in Gaza.

Israel tore down 10 Jewish settler outposts yesterday under initial steps towards implementing the roadmap to peace and Palestinian statehood.

However, Israel's attempt to assasinate al-Rantissi provoked Arab outrage and could spur new violence.

Rantissi, 56, one of Hamas' best-known public faces, has taken centre stage over the past week in rejecting calls by Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas to cease attacks on Israelis.

"Israel should expect that this crime ... will not pass without a severe punishment," Mahmoud al-Zahar, another top Hamas official, told al-Jazeera television.

Israeli security sources confirmed that Israel had tried to assassinate Rantissi.

"Israel will continue to fight terror. The policy hasn't changed, because the Palestinian Authority isn't doing it," one senior source said.

There was no official Israeli comment on the missile attack in Gaza City on Rantissi's car, which witnesses said killed two people and wounded about 20, including the Hamas leader and his teenage son.

Meanwhile, the removal of the clusters of caravans on lonely hilltops set Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on a path to confrontation with settlers he had long championed. But he drew Palestinian derision.

"This is a theatrical and insignificant step," said Nabil Abu Rdainah, a top aide to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell welcomed the Israeli move, which followed a pledge Sharon made at a peace summit on June 4 with Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and US President George W. Bush in Aqaba, Jordan.

"I'm pleased that Israel is now discharging the commitment it made to the international community at the Aqaba summit," Powell said in Chile.

The Israeli Army said it had removed "unauthorised structures" at 10 outposts. Deputy Defence Minister Zeev Boim said 15 outposts, including the 10 already dismantled, would go at this stage.

The roadmap, the most far-reaching Middle East peace plan in more than two years, calls for an end to violence and reciprocal confidence-building steps.

They include the removal of settler outposts set up since March 2001, the month Sharon took office, and a freeze on construction inside established settlements.

Boim said further steps by Israel would depend on Abbas and his security chief, Mohammed Dahlan, reining in militants.

The Settlers Council, representing the 220,000 Israelis who live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, charged that accepting the plan and removing outposts was giving in to terrorism.

Council chairman Bentzi Lieberman described a "three-front approach" of opposition - politically from within the Government, in the field by physically preventing soldiers from removing outposts, and legally by appealing to the Supreme Court to reverse the decision.

The settlers plan to launch a "war of attrition" in which two outposts are built for every one that is removed, Lieberman said.



Settlers oppose the roadmap's call for a construction freeze at the 145 settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip which were authorised by the Government.

Israel seized the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 Middle East war and the international community considers the settlements illegal under international law.

The settlers also oppose the creation by 2005 of a Palestinian state under the roadmap, drawn up by the United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia.

Abbas urged militants to stop attacking Israelis. Hamas rebuffed his call but said it would consider renewing ceasefire talks it had broken off with him.