Senior Hamas Leader Killed in Strike; Militants End Truce

The strike led Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups to declare an end to a seven-week-old cease-fire.

Hamas leader Ismail Abu Shanab and two bodyguards were riding in a car in Gaza City when as many as five missiles fired from an Israeli helicopter struck and destroyed the vehicle. Some 15 bystanders were also reported injured in the strike.

Israeli officials had hours earlier decided to take military action after the suicide bombing that killed 20, including six children, and wounded some 100 others in one of the deadliest attacks of the three-year-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Hamas claimed responsibility for the bus attack, saying it was retaliation for the deaths of members of its group during Israeli army raids that continued during the cease-fire that was announced at the end of June after negotiations between Palestinian Prime Minister Mahamoud Abbas and militant groups.

Abu Shanab, a U.S.-educated engineering professor who was well known in the media, was reportedly viewed as a moderate member of Hamas and had played a key role in the negotiations between Abbas and Hamas leaders.

“He was a murderer. I hope it’s a lesson for the Hamas people. But it isn’t enough, we have to get to each and every Hamas leader,” Israeli Vice-Premier Ehud Olmert said of the strike, according to Reuters.

Dozens rallied outside of Abu Shanab’s home and others around the site of his smoldering vehicle in the wake of the strike, chanting “No to Abbas and no to his road map,” according to media reports from the region.

“We consider ourselves no longer bound by this cease-fire,” Hamas leader Ismail Hanieh said after identifying Abu Shanab’s body at a Gaza City morgue, according to the Associated Press.

Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin vowed revenge, telling the Israelis, “You will pay the price for these crimes,” according to the news service.

Islamic Jihad, a close ally to Hamas, also renounced the truce, according to media reports. Some members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a group loosely affiliated with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement, said they also consider the cease-fire over.

Ahmed Gheim, a senior member of the Fatah movement, said the group has not decided whether to abandon the truce, according to Reuters.

Under pressure from both Israel and Washington, Abbas had ordered the arrests of those responsible for Tuesday’s bus bombing and asked his Cabinet for proposals on a larger crackdown, but warned the death of Abu Shanab would make it more difficult for the Palestinian Authority to take action.

Abbas told reporters in Ramallah that the missile attack was an “ugly crime” and that it would surely “affect the whole [peace] process,” according to a BBC account.

The latest violence and the abandonment of the truce appear to put the U.S.-backed road map to Middle East peace in serious danger of failure. The internationally backed peace plan, which proposes Palestinian statehood as early as 2005, also calls on the Palestinians to dismantle the militant organization.

“The end of the road map is a cliff that both sides will fall off of,” U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters at the United Nations in New York on Thursday.

Powell called on Arafat to make available to Abbas “those security elements that are under his control” and allow progress to be made on the road map.

“The Palestinian people, the Israeli people deserve better, and those who are determined to blow up the road map must not be allowed to succeed,” Powell said with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan at his side.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon warned that if the Palestinian Authority “does not take all the necessary steps in the war against terror, real and substantial steps, it will not be possible to advance on the diplomatic track.”

Israeli troops also raided the West Bank towns of Nablus, Jenin and Tulkarem in search of militants. In the West Bank city of Hebron, troops blew up the home of the Jerusalem bus bomber, a routine penalization intended as a deterrent.