Israel claims attack justified

JERUSALEM - Israel defended itself last night against a rare United States rebuke for its attempted assassination of a Palestinian militant leader that further undermined a Middle East peace plan.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered aides to turn over intelligence to US officials to back accusations that Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi, the public face of the radical Islamic group Hamas, had been co-ordinating attacks on Israelis.

"This information is intended to show that Rantissi was not just a ticking bomb but a factory of ticking bombs," a senior Israeli security source said.

The helicopter missile strike that wounded Rantissi in Gaza drew vows of revenge from Hamas, raising the spectre of a new cycle of bloodshed that could bury a US-backed "roadmap" aimed at ending 32 months of conflict.

Israel killed one of Rantissi's aides and a woman bystander in the attack.

US President George W. Bush expressed concern that the assassination attempt could weaken Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas' attempts to get militant groups to stop violence against Israelis.

"I also don't believe the attacks helped Israeli security," Bush said.

He ordered top aides to urgently convey those points to Israeli and Palestinian officials and to lean on them to stick to the letter and spirit of the roadmap, which stipulates reciprocal concessions leading to a Palestinian state by 2005.

About two hours after the White House criticised the strike, Israeli tanks and helicopters, responding to Hamas rocket attacks into Israel, fired towards a Palestinian neighbourhood in the northern Gaza Strip, killing two young men and a 16-year-old girl and wounding as many as 30.



Last night, Israeli military radio reported that Israeli security services had had intelligence on plans for 53 attacks, with half of the attacks planned by Hamas.

According to the intelligence material, Rantissi had advocated resuming suicide attacks inside Israel during a meeting with the movement's spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin.

Rantissi's intention was also to force Abbas to go back on his statement at last week's peace summit, in which he promised to put an end to the armed struggle.

A poll in the Israeli daily Maariv yesterday found 56 per cent support for the attack on Rantissi.

Some Israeli political commentators joined in the criticism of Sharon, including suggestions the right-wing leader had used the assassination attempt to try to mollify hardliners fiercely opposed to his acceptance of the roadmap.

"Targeted screw-up" was how Maariv newspaper commentator Chemi Shalev dubbed the assassination attempt.

"It was a matter of miserable timing," columnist Zvi Barel wrote in the daily Haaretz, saying the missiles unleashed against Rantissi had effectively hit Bush and Abbas.

Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, told al-Arabiya television he had appealed to Washington to "save the roadmap".

Sharon said he was committed to the plan but "we will continue to fight the heads of extremist terror organisations that murder Jews and are enemies of peace."

Sharon's spokesman, Raanan Gissin, said on CNN that Rantissi was co-ordinating attacks by Hamas and two other militant groups, including an ambush that killed four soldiers in Gaza.

Rantissi, who has presented himself as a Hamas political figure and spokesman, had taken centre stage in the past week in rejecting Abbas' efforts to coax militants into a ceasefire after a three-way summit with Bush and Sharon in Jordan.

The missile barrage set off a deadly cycle of violence of the sort that has doomed previous diplomatic drives to end the Palestinian uprising by creating a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza co-existing alongside Israel.

Witnesses said two helicopter gunships fired seven missiles that set Rantissi's car ablaze in Gaza City.

Rantissi, 55, leaped clear just in time and was treated in hospital for shrapnel wounds.

Hamas responded by firing rockets into a town in Israel and this prompted the second Israeli helicopter attack .


- REUTERS