MIDDLE EAST: Violent "resistance" to Israel will continue even after Israel pulls out of the Gaza Strip, and even if it also leaves the West Bank, the leader of Islamic Jihad vowed yesterday.
He was speaking at the funeral of his nephew, an alleged bombing-organiser, who was killed in an Israeli missile strike at the weekend.
"Gaza is not the problem," declared Abdullah al-Shami, head of the Islamic Jihad group, which has carried out scores of suicide bombings and other attacks on Israeli targets.
"The West Bank is not the problem. All of Palestine is the problem," he added, apparently referring to the entire area of mandatory Palestine, including sovereign Israel.
Al-Shami was participating in a Gaza funeral for his nephew, Mahmoud al-Shami, who was killed on Saturday in an Israeli missile attack. A 12-year-old Palestinian boy also died.
Islamic Jihad has vowed violent revenge for al-Shami's death. Israeli officials said he was a leading orchestrator of acts of terrorism, including a double suicide bombing at Beit Lid outside Tel Aviv in 1995 in which 23 people, almost of all of them soldiers, were killed.
The officials also said he organized an attack on Gaza's isolated Netzarim settlement last October in which three soldiers were killed, and had been planning another attack on Netzarim.
He was arrested by the Palestinian Authority after the Beit Lid attack, but released by the PA early in the current "second Intifada" three years ago.
Israel apologised for the death of the 12-year-old. A spokesman said it had to maintain its so-called "targeted strikes" in order "to prevent terrorism before it occurs".
The Palestinian Authority Prime Minister, Mr Ahmed Korei, condemned the missile attackas an act of "cowardly aggression".
Leaders of Islamic Jihad and the larger Hamas are hailing recent statements by Israel's Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon, about an imminent unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip as a victory.
Mr Sharon is this week expected to detail his thinking to a visiting delegation of senior Bush administration officials, and to travel to Washington towards the end of the month to seek President Bush's support.
Aides say he plans to evacuate 17 of Gaza's 20 settlements this summer or autumn, with the 7,500 settlers to be rehoused inside Israel or possibly at West Bank settlements.
Leaders of the settlers, who live among 1.3 million Gaza Palestinians, are opposing withdrawal, and two right-wing coalition factions say they will leave Mr Sharon's government if he goes ahead.
Aides to Mr Sharon added yesterday that the Prime Minister was now rerouting parts of the security barrier Israel is constructing to thwart suicide bombers. "Loops" where the fence strayed deep into the West Bank to encircle settlements would be eliminated.
The change comes as the International Court of Justice in The Hague prepares to hold hearings on the legality of the barrier, and the move is designed to maximise US and other international backing for the barrier.
The US and EU argue that the International Court is not the appropriate forum to discuss the barrier, but while upholding Israel's right to self-defence, oppose the routing of the barrier inside the West Bank.
Meanwhile heavy US pressure on the PA, apparently led to the hurried indictment on Saturday of four Palestinians for killing three Americans in an attack on a US convoy last October. Appearing at a military court in Gaza City, all four denied involvement in the roadside bombing.