Posted on 11/18/2002 5:06:00 PM PST by knighthawk
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has given an order to assassinate Islamic Jihad chief, Ramadan Abdullah Shalah, according to a report in London’s Sunday Times.
The report claims that Sharon on Saturday ordered the Israeli Intelligence - Mossad - agents to move the Jihad Head, to the top of its hit list. Shalah resides in the Syrian capital of Damascus.
Israeli Defense Minister Saul Mofaz has joined the instruction to exert all efforts to harm the Islamic Jihad. “We shall hit terror, with an emphasis on the Islamic Jihad and the leaders of terror, wherever they shall be”, Mofaz said during a meeting, which was held in his office following Friday’s shooting attack in the West Bank town of Hebron.
“They must be found, from all organizations, and we must lay our hands on them.”
The Al Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad, claimed responsibility for the Hebron attack.
Secretary General of the Islamic Jihad, Dr. Shalah told the Qatar-based Al Jazeera that the attack was committed to put pressure on the Palestinian Authority, so that the latter would end its contacts with Hamas on ending attacks against Israel. “This is a message to Hamas and to Fatah,” he said, “We don’t agree with their understandings.”
In late 1995, Fathi Shikaki the leader of the Islamic Jihad, was gunned down in Malta by Mossad agents. He was assassinated in Malta where he had stopped en route from Libya to Syria.
Leadership of the organisation passed to Shalah, who has a doctorate from the University of Durham and had just left a post at the University of South Florida.
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