Reuters
Israel Threatens Syria After Hamas Bombings
Date: Wed, Sep 01, 2004
By Matt Spetalnick
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel threatened Syria Wednesday over what officials said was complicity in Palestinian suicide bombings that killed 16 people in the first such attacks in the Jewish state in nearly six months.
Security officials said the Israeli military would answer Tuesday's twin bus bombings with a renewed assassination campaign against leaders of Hamas, the militant group behind the attacks, both in the Palestinian territories and abroad.
"Whoever is responsible for using terror against us won't sleep quietly," Israeli army chief Moshe Yaalon told a parliamentary committee.
An Israeli missile strike later wounded five Palestinians, including militants, in Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza, witnesses said. Minutes later, Israeli tanks and military vehicles rolled into the camp, a frequent scene of army raids.
Israel's threats heightened regional tensions by raising the specter of an air raid similar to one carried out deep inside Syria last October against a suspected Palestinian militant training camp.
"We cannot sever (a connection of) what happened yesterday in Beerseba from the activity occurring in Lebanon or Syria," Israeli media quoted Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz as saying at a ceremony for the army's civilian employees.
"Hizbollah activity in Lebanon, with the assistance of Iran, as well as Hamas in Damascus, is very intense, and from there a large part of the attacks against Israel are launched."
Syrian officials were not immediately available for comment.
Israel accuses Syria of harboring militant groups and using Lebanese Hizbollah guerrillas as surrogates against the Jewish state -- accusations consistently denied by Damascus.
Hamas denied that its leadership outside of the Palestinian territories was involved to the attacks.
DASHED HOPES
Tuesday's bombings aboard commuter buses in the desert city of Beersheba dashed Israeli hopes that Hamas had lost the ability to strike inside the Jewish state.
A renewed drive against Hamas's hierarchy could deepen the latest spiral of violence, further complicating Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites)'s plans to pull out of Gaza by the end of 2005.
The bus bombings inflicted the worst Israeli death toll since an Islamic Jihad suicide bomber killed 23 people last October at a restaurant in the Israeli port city of Haifa.
That attack triggered last year's Israeli air strike near Damascus, the deepest inside Syria in 30 years.
Yaalon said Israel must "deal with ... those who support terrorism whether it be elements of the Palestinian Authority (news - web sites), elements from Hizbollah in Lebanon or terror command posts in Damascus with Syrian approval."
The Beersheba bombings were Hamas's revenge for the assassinations of two top leaders, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Abdel al-Aziz al-Rantissi in missile strikes earlier this year.
Top Hamas officials in Gaza, Mahmoud al-Zahar and Ismail Haniyeh, have since gone underground. Hamas political chief Khaled Meshaal, who survived an Israeli assassination attempt in Jordan in 1997, is based in Damascus.
(Additional reporting by Megan Goldin, Allyn Fisher-Ilan and Corinne Heller in Jerusalem, Haitham Tamimi in Hebron and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza)
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