Jan. 10, 2005 20:06 | Updated Jan. 10, 2005 22:58
Hamas calls for more suicide bombings
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH
BIR ZEIT
 

As the Palestinian Central Election Committee was holding a press conference in Ramallah on Monday to announce the final results of the election for the chairmanship of the Palestinian Authority, hundreds of students attended a rally organized by Hamas at Bir Zeit University, where they called for more suicide attacks against Israel.

"Oh suicide bomber, wrap yourself with an explosive belt and fill the scene with blood," chanted a chorus of five male students at the rally, held by the Hamas-affiliated Islamic List to mark the ninth anniversary of the killing of Hamas bomb-maker Yehya Ayyash, better known as "The Engineer."

Green Hamas flags and large portraits of slain Hamas leaders Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz Rantisi decorated the campus and the hall where some 500 activists gathered to honor the former university student responsible for a string of suicide bombings that killed at least 100 Israelis in the mid-90s.

Organizers said the timing of the parley was not linked to the election of Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) as Yasser Arafat's successor. Speakers refrained from making any reference to the election, pointing out the event, approved by the university administration, had been planned long before the vote. They also refused to comment on the results of the vote.

"Ayyash is alive and don't say that he's dead," a speaker told the crowd, who responded by shouting "Allahu Akbar! (God is great)." Another speaker described the Hamas bomb-maker as "the engineer of death for those who deserved to die."

The students also paid tribute to anther colleague, Izzaddin al-Masri, who carried out the suicide attack in Jerusalem's Sbarro restaurant in 2002, killing 16 people and wounding more than 100.

The Hamas rally was seen as a show of strength in the wake of Abbas's victory and a reminder of the tough challenges he faces from the Islamic group and its allies.

The guest of honor at the rally was Hasan Yousef, the moderate Hamas leader in the West Bank who was recently released from Israeli prison.

Asked about the election of Abbas, he said he had phoned the new PA chairman earlier in the day to congratulate him on his election. "We hope he will be able to do something for the Palestinian people, but we're not the problem," he said.

"The problem is the Israeli occupation and the daily killings, assassinations, detentions and house demolitions. If the occupation stops, there will be no problem. The question is whether the Israeli government will halt its aggression against the Palestinians, and I don't think it will."

Yousef said Hamas did not rule out the possibility of a truce with Israel. "Hamas has in the past offered many gestures and a hudna (temporary truce) to Israel, but the response has always been more escalation and assassinations," he added.

Hamas, which boycotted Sunday's election, announced on Monday that it would nevertheless deal with Abbas as the elected leader of the PA. Several Hamas officials in the Gaza Strip questioned the integrity of the vote, which they said was plagued by massive voter fraud and irregularities, but pledged to respect the choice of the Palestinians.

Hamas's leader in the Gaza Strip, Mahmoud Zahar, said he did not see Abbas's victory as a mandate from the Palestinians to disarm Palestinian groups.

"If Abu Mazen wants a mandate, he has to come up with a way to ask the Palestinian refugees around the world, not just those in the West Bank and Gaza Strip," he said. "Abu Mazen has said that these are only internal elections. Therefore they can't be considered an authorization from all Palestinians."