GAZA CITY, Aug 2: A senior Hamas political leader said on Friday he would not oppose his 22-year-old son becoming a suicide bomber, despite an Israeli report that his wife had previously prevented such action.

“Surely, I would not oppose it, it would be his decision,” Abdel Aziz Rantissi said.

“As I am encouraging all Palestinians to do that, I am also encouraging my sons to do that,” he said.

He dismissed an Israeli television broadcast of a telephone conversation between his wife and an alleged member of Hamas’s military wing in which she categorically refused to let one of their sons participate in a suicide attack.

“Do you think that our military wing would recruit future martyrs over the phone and ask their mothers for their permission?” he asked, amused by the idea.

“The man was not from Gaza and presented himself as a member of the Yehiya Ayash Martyr’s Brigades,” a group named after a Hamas leader slain by Israel, he said.

“He asked her to send her child to martyrdom,” he recalled.

“My wife dealt with it as Israeli intelligence, and rightly so. She knew it is not our military wing’s methods,” he added.—AFP