MIDEAST: Members paid their respect to Sheikh Yassin yesterday, reports Nuala Haughey in Gaza City.
Gaza fell oddly silent yesterday as locals continued to lament the death of the Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and reflect on the future of the Islamic militant organisation he founded, as well as their conflict with Israel.
With shops, businesses and schools shut down for the official three-day mourning period, the city's normally bustling dusty streets were virtually empty and ominously quiet, in contrast with the eruptions of public rage and grief at the mass gathering for the funeral of the wheelchair-bound cleric the previous day.
Despite fresh Israeli pledges yesterday to strike at more Hamas leaders, senior members of the radical Islamic group appeared in central Gaza yesterday to pay their respects and show a united and determined front to the public, Israel and the world.
They joined hundreds who gathered throughout the day under a huge mourning tent erected in a football stadium.
Dr Mahmoud Zahar (59), a veteran member of Hamas's political wing, predicted "a level of revenge to match the level of the crime committed." "Sharon should consider the prospect of his policy. Now a big wave of anti- Jewish and anti-Zionist sentiment is spreading in Arab and even European countries and even America. By his commitment to crime he is going to loose," he said.
In a highly symbolic show of support, the Palestinian Prime Minister, Ahmed Korei, travelled to Gaza City from the West Bank and stood with Dr Zahar as he paid tribute to Sheikh Yassin, the "hero, martyr, leader," who Israel has denounced as its very own Bin Laden.
Dr Ghazi Hamad, the editor of Al Resala (The Message), a weekly Gaza newspaper with ties to Hamas, said the death of Sheikh Yassin was "a big blow" to the organisation.
"I think he created a new generation in Hamas and also a new society in Gaza and he gave new meaning to Islamic resistance," he said.
However, Dr Hamad added that Hamas has faced many crises since its formation in 1987, such as Israel's deportation of hundreds of its members, including the new leader of Hamas in Gaza, Dr Abdel Aziz Rantisi, and Dr Zahar, to southern Lebanon in 1992, as well as assassinations of its leaders, including Ismail Abu Shanab in Gaza last August.
"Hamas is not dependent on just one person," he said. "It has a collective leadership and in the past four to five years its policies have become more stabilised regarding the peace process, the military struggle, ceasefires, relations with factions and the Palestinian Authority."
Dr Hamad said although the killing of Sheikh Yassin has earned Hamas more support, it has also put it under "big pressure to do something against Israel. It would be shameful for it to keep silent." This sentiment was endorsed yesterday by mourners, who sat in neat rows beneath an awning hung with portraits of Sheikh Yassin and circular cardboard condolence placards trimmed with fresh flowers.
One speaker from Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the militant group linked to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, said over a loudspeaker: "Sheikh Yassin rest peacefully in your grave and we swear that we will make Israeli children orphans and turn their life into hell." There was also an unusual tribute paid by one local man whose son, born on the evening of the Sheikh's death, has been named after him. Mr Halid Al Khoudary (33) said he greatly admired the cleric who taught him religion and Arabic in the 1980s.
"I want my son to grow up and to be like Sheikh Yassin and to fight Israel and America. The generation of my son is the generation of liberation," he said.
New leaders of Hamas
Abdel Aziz Rantisi is the new Hamas leader for the Gaza Strip, in place of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the movement's spiritual leader assassinated by Israel.
He vowed yesterday to avenge his death. "We will fight them everywhere. We will hit them everywhere. We will chase them everywhere. We will teach them lessons in confrontation," he told thousands of mourners gathered in Gaza's main soccer stadium.
Rantisi, a doctor who has served as Hamas's chief spokesman, was named earlier as Hamas chief for the Gaza Strip, taking on some of Yassin's duties.
Khaled Meshaal, Hamas's politburo chief living in exile in the Arab world, was named overall leader, succeeding Yassin, the group's wheelchair-bound founder.
Meshaal was the target of an Israeli hit squad caught by Jordanian authorities in 1997 after they injected him with a drug during a daring daylight attack on an Amman street.
Jordan's King Hussein was so enraged, he talked of hanging the captured Israelis unless they handed over an antidote to save Meshaal. - (Reuters)