ISRAEL: Israel has stepped up security for some of its most senior politicians, after the Hamas extremist group vowed to kill Israeli political leaders to avenge Saturday's killing in Gaza of Ibrahim al-Maqadma (51), one of its founders, writes David Horovitz in Jerusalem.
Mr al-Maqadma and three of his bodyguards were in a car hit by missiles fired from an Israeli helicopter.
At Saturday's funeral for Mr al-Maqadma, at which mourners demanded the execution of 100 Israelis in revenge, Mr Abdel-Aziz Rantisi, another Gaza leader of Hamas, said his group's gunmen had been ordered to "target Israeli leaders".
Israeli media yesterday reported that security had been stepped up at the homes of the Defence Minister, Mr Shaul Mofaz, the former prime minister, Mr Ehud Barak, and other prominent Israeli politicians.
The assassination of Mr al-Maqadma came after a new spate of Hamas attacks on Israeli targets, including last Wednesday's suicide bombing in Haifa, in which 16 Israelis, most of them teenagers, were killed.
Mr Mofaz announced yesterday that Hamas was now the focus of its "war on terror" and that "no terrorist chief, with the emphasis on Hamas, will be immune".
Hamas, which openly calls for Israel's destruction and is nowadays almost as popular among Palestinians as Mr Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction, claims that Mr al-Maqadma was a "political leader" with no involvement in the orchestration of suicide bombings and other attacks.
Mr Mofaz said yesterday the dead man was "the ultimate arch-terrorist, up to his neck in planning hundreds of terrorist attacks".
The suicide bombing in Haifa ended a two-month lull in such attacks, and violence is continuing. Israel has markedly stepped up its military operations in the Gaza Strip, where at least 15 Palestinians have been killed since Thursday, eight of them civilians in an explosion which the Palestinians ascribe to a tank shell but which Israel insists was caused by an explosive device prepared by Palestinians.
On Friday night, Hamas gunmen disguised as Orthodox Jews shot dead an Israeli couple in their home in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba, and were then killed by Israeli troops. Two more gunmen were killed attempting a raid on a second settlement that night.
Israel has now established a "security zone" in the northern part of the Gaza Strip - retaking territory relinquished under the collapsed Oslo peace process - in order, it says, to prevent Hamas from firing rockets from the area into sovereign Israel.
Nevertheless, four Qassam rockets were fired over the border yesterday morning, causing no injuries.