GAZA CITY, April 18: Some 200,000 furious Palestinians jammed the streets of Gaza City on Sunday to pay their last respects to slain Hamas leader Abdelaziz Rantissi
, assassinated in an Israeli air strike.
Hundreds of heavily armed fighters from all the main Palestinian nationalist and Islamic movements joined the funeral cortege, unleashing volleys of gunfire into the air, as a top Hamas figure promised a powerful response to Rantissi's killing.
"When the opportunity presents itself, we will deliver a widescale response. It will come," Mahmud al-Zahar told mourners who had gathered in Gaza City's main Al-Omri mosque. "We have a project of retaliation. It doesn't mean we will respond after every hit, but we will continue retaliating until we get Jerusalem," he said.
"Hamas is not dependent on one or two people, it is a society working for the establishment of a state," Mr Zahar said. Among the mourners were members of the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Legislative Council (PLC), alongside some 1,500 masked members of Hamas' armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, many of whom were brandishing rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs).
The streets of Gaza ground to a halt as the cortege began its journey from the Shifa hospital to Rantissi's home in the northern Al-Nasr suburb, his body draped in a green Hamas flag and covered with flowers.
After his family paid its last respects, his body was then taken to the Al-Omri mosque before being laid to rest in the martyrs' cemetery, also the last resting place of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Hamas' founder and spiritual leader who was killed in a similar Israeli raid on March 22.
"Rantissi - the bridegroom of Palestine!" blared a loudspeaker mounted on the back of a brown Hamas van, calling on the crowd to mete out swift revenge. "With our soul and with our blood we sacrifice ourselves to you, Rantissi," the crowds chanted, suddenly breaking into furious whistling as an Israeli F-16 warplane roared overhead.
Though the majority of mourners were men and children, a few dozen women also took part, many of them wrapped in green Hamas flags, while others peered discreetly from overhead windows.
"If I could get hold of Sharon I would slaughter him. I would rip him to pieces with my own teeth," said one 50-year-old housewife. Outside the mosque, thousands of onlookers fought for space and a group of some 50 veiled women chanted rhythmic choruses in praise of Hamas' fighters.
Nearby, dozens of men knelt to pray on mats laid in the middle of the road with droves of excited children running around them, several dressed in t-shirts bearing a photo of Yassin.
"I will sacrifice one day of work for a person who sacrificed his life and his blood for me," said Abu Mohamed, a 50-year-old factory worker from Jabalya refugee camp north of Gaza City. "I have come to say goodbye."
Despite the occasional crackle of gunfire, many of the gunmen were cautious about firing in the air, making sure to save their ammunition for more important purposes, one militant from the radical Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades said.
"Shooting is just for attacking the settlements and for Israelis," said the 23-year-old without giving his name. "What has happened here does not touch only Hamas but it touches all of the Palestinian people and factions," said Jamali al-Madhoun, a Gaza-based member of the secular Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Other demonstrations were held throughout the Palestinian territories, including in the West Bank city of Ramallah where more than 4,000 people protested against the Israeli operation. -AFP
