The late Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat had instructed
Hamas to
launch terror attacks against Israel when he realized that peace talks
with
Israel weren’t going anywhere, Mahmoud Zahar, one of the Hamas leaders
in the
Gaza Strip, revealed on Tuesday.
“President Arafat instructed Hamas to
carry out a number of military operations in the heart of the Jewish
state after
he felt that his negotiations with the Israeli government then had
failed,”
Zahar told students and lecturers at the Islamic University in Gaza
City.
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Zahar did not specify when and how Arafat instructed Hamas to
launch the “military operations” – most of which were suicide bombings
targeting
Israeli civilians.
However, it is believed the reference is to Arafat’s
response to the failure of the Camp David summit in 2000.
This was the
first time that a senior Hamas official disclosed that some of the Hamas
suicide
bombings during the second intifada, which erupted 10 years ago, were
ordered by
Arafat. Until now it was widely believed that Arafat had only ordered
his Fatah
militiamen to carry out terror attacks on Israel.
According to various
testimonies, Arafat ordered the armed wing of Fatah, Aqsa Martyrs
Brigades, to
launch terror attacks against Israel after he realized that the
government of
then-prime minister Ehud Barak was not going to meet all of his
demands.
Zahar claimed that Arafat’s decision to negotiate with Israel
was one of the factors leading to his “assassination.” He said the
decision was
a grave mistake and a tactical error on Arafat’s part.
Zahar urged PA
President Mahmoud Abbas to pull out immediately from the talks with
Israel.
He claimed that the PA’s security coordination with Israel has
resulted in the elimination of a number of Hamas men in the West Bank at
the
hands of the IDF.
He added that Hamas now was better able to smuggle
weapons and other military equipment into the Gaza Strip in preparation
for the
next confrontation with Israel.
Zahar said that a growing number of
Palestinians were now convinced that the armed struggle was the only way
to deal
with the Jewish state.