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AL QUDS, June 11: Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya could become a target of Israeli military if he approves attacks by Palestinian militants, a leading member of Israel’s governing Kadima party said on Sunday.
“If Israel discovers that any Hamas official has given green light to attacks, and then there will be no one who enjoys immunity,” Tzahi Hanegbi told Israeli radio when asked if Mr Haniya could be a possible target. Mr Haniya belongs to the radical Hamas movement.
Mr Hanegbi, the chairman of Israeli parliament’s foreign affairs and defence committee, said that a ‘confrontation with Hamas has become unavoidable’ following the governing Islamist movement’s decision to resume rocket attacks.
Israel has assassinated a number of top Hamas leaders in the past, including the group’s founder Ahmed Yassin two years ago.
THREE KILLED: Two Hamas militants trying to fire rockets into Israel were killed in air strikes on Sunday, as the ruling Islamists fought Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas’s referendum on coexistence with Israel.
A third Palestinian militant from the faction Islamic Jihad faction was also killed while preparing a rocket attack, hours after an Israeli civilian was seriously injured when a makeshift missile slammed into his home.
The new bloodshed came as Israel tried to contain the fallout from the death of eight Palestinian civilians in an explosion on a beach in the northern Gaza Strip on Friday — an incident that prompted Hamas to end an 18-month truce.
Mr Abbas, a moderate from the formerly dominant Fatah faction, announced on Saturday that a first-ever Palestinian referendum would be held on July 26, prompting accusations from Hamas that he was engineering a coup against its government formed after a landslide election win in January.—AFP
