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‘Israel considers Palestinian PM legitimate assassination target’

* Hamas leader brushes aside the comment
* Says the statement is not worthy of response
* Olmert vows ‘no compromise’ against militants

JERUSALEM: Ismail Haniyah, chosen by the militant group Hamas to serve as Palestinian prime minister, could be a target for assassination if Hamas carries out suicide bombings, a former Israeli security chief said on Friday.

Avi Dichter, the former head of the Shin Bet internal security service and a possible future defence minister, also told the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper that Haniyeh would be arrested if he ever fell into the hands of the Israeli army.

Haniyeh brushed aside the comments as not worthy of a response. “We do not fear threats,” he said. Dichter told the Israeli daily that he does not “see a situation where Haniyeh will have immunity just because he is prime minister”.

“If there will be a terror attack in which Israel decides to respond with a preventive step, then Haniyeh would be a legitimate target because Hamas could not carry out a terror attack without Haniyeh’s authorisation,” he said.

Dichter, the architect of Israel’s policy of assassinating Palestinian militants, no longer holds a policy-making position but he wields clout within the centrist Kadima party which is expected to win a March 28 general election. “(Haniyeh) was and remains a man of terror,” Dichter said. “If Haniyeh turns up at a military checkpoint I believe that he would be arrested, interrogated and put on trial for being involved in terror attacks”.

Acting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has vowed to press on with a campaign of attacks against armed Palestinian groups after the deadliest day of violence since the Hamas election victory.

Olmert, who is seeking re-election next month, told a group of Russian immigrant voters late Thursday that he had no intention of easing off operations against militant groups on the day that soldiers killed five Palestinians in a refugee camp in the West Bank city of Nablus.

“Today we have hit Nablus, last week we struck at Gaza and before that in Jenin and we will continue to do so in every place, with all our forces and without compromise,” Olmert said during an address in the upper Nazareth region, excerpts of which were broadcast on Israeli radio Friday.

Olmert, whose Kadima party is well ahead in the polls despite a spurt in popularity for a far-right Russian-speaking party, added that at the same time Israel “will not stint in its efforts to advance the peace process”. But he reiterated that the Islamist movement Hamas, poised to form the next Palestinian government, was “not a partner for peace”. afp

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