TEL AVIV, March 22: Israel's assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was meant to decapitate Hamas, but could end up drawing a wave of new recruits to the militant movement and broadening its hardline appeal.

While losing its charismatic spiritual leader may cause Hamas organizational setbacks, a surge of sympathy among even moderate Palestinians will lend popular legitimacy to its fight against the Jewish state, Middle East experts said on Monday.

"This is a great recruiting opportunity for Hamas," said Azzam al Tamimi of the Institute of Islamic Political Thought in London. Sheikh Yassin was the highest-profile Palestinian militant to be targeted by Israel during more than three years of the uprising.

"He was not only a religious leader, but a political and operational leader as well," said Hala Mustafa, editor of Al Ahram Democracy Review in Cairo.

Hala Mustafa said retaliatory suicide bombings by Hamas could only be forestalled if Israel and the Palestinians resumed peace talks that deadlocked in 2000. But Mr Tamimi saw Hamas's hard line winning the hearts of increasingly disenchanted Palestinians.

"Hamas is special because it has a clear vision, unlike the pragmatic (Palestinian national) movement that continued to waver and make compromises," Tamimi said.

Each Israeli military sweep of Gaza and the West Bank has been followed by the emergence of new militant cells that send off a fresh crop of suicide bombers. A key element in Hamas's grassroots strength is a broad welfare network filling gaps left by crumbling or graft-ridden institutions of the mainstream Palestinian Authority

Along with kindred group Islamic Jihad, Hamas commands some 25-30 per cent in Palestinian polls, pulling them about even with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.

"Hamas is a movement that is horizontally and vertically integrated in the very fabric of Palestinian society," said Magnus Ranstorp of St. Andrew's University. "This will unite everyone in confrontation with the Israelis, on all quarters."

In the West Bank and Gaza, Sheikh Yassin was second in popularity only to Yasser Arafat - which made for rivalry during interim Middle East peace deals of the 1990s, when Hamas assailed the Palestinian president for his crackdowns on militants. -Reuters