Los Angeles Times
September 7, 2004
GAZA CITY -- Tens of thousands of Palestinians, some firing rifles into the air
and crying out for vengeance, joined in a flag-waving funeral march Tuesday for
14 fighters killed in an Israeli strike on a Hamas training camp.
The
attack -- probably the most serious single blow Israel has dealt the militant
group's rank and file during nearly four years of conflict -- prompted a burst
of unusually harsh criticism of Israel from Palestinian Authority Prime Minister
Ahmed Qureia, who is generally considered a moderate.
"There will
certainly be retaliation, and that retaliation will be justified," Qureia told
his Cabinet hours after Israeli aircraft pounded a dusty soccer field on the
eastern edge of Gaza City, apparently catching a midnight assembly of Hamas
fighters by surprise.
Israel described the operation as part of its war
on Hamas, which had claimed responsibility for a pair of bus bombings a week
earlier in the southern city of Beersheba that killed 16 Israelis.
"Our
operations are systematic and long-term," said Israeli Deputy Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert, a confidant of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. "We are interested in
striking as many Hamas activists as possible whom we know to be in different
stages of preparations for terror attacks inside Israel."
The Beersheba
bombings were carried out by a highly secretive Hamas cell from the West Bank
city of Hebron, and the Israeli security establishment was said to be deeply
frustrated over its failure to have picked up any indications of the plot.
Israeli media reports said that led to a decision by top policy-makers to try to
smash the Hamas infrastructure at all levels.
Most of Hamas' founding
leaders in Gaza have been killed, and the rest have been driven underground.
Israeli military sources said Tuesday's strike was meant to send a message to
the group's foot soldiers, even relatively young and untested ones, that they
are not immune from being targeted.
Many Hamas-affiliated gunmen have
died in clashes with Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip's urban neighborhoods and
refugee camps. But those marked out by Israel for "pinpoint killings" --
usually by helicopter-fired missiles -- have been senior leaders, or at least
field commanders known to have masterminded attacks against Israel.
Several Palestinians living near the soccer field where the strike took place
said masked young men in camouflage uniforms had been holding nighttime
military-style drills on the packed-dirt expanse. The district, the rundown
neighborhood of Shajaiyeh, is home to many Hamas members.
Izzidin al
Qassam, the military wing of Hamas, acknowledged in a statement that "mujahedin"
had been training at the targeted site. But it insisted that the field was a
summer youth camp.
The dead ranged in age from the late teens to early
20s, medical officials said. The officials said, however, that some of the
dozens of injured appeared to have been bystanders from the neighborhood.
One young man injured in the strike had a black scarf wrapped around his
face as he sought treatment at Gaza City's main Shifa Hospital, whose corridors
were crowded with wounded and floors streaked with blood. He refused to give
his name but said he and companions had been gathered around their commander,
preparing for a practice drill, when he was thrown to the ground by an
explosion.
In the past, senior Hamas leaders have deemed it
sufficiently safe to appear in the midst of a funeral throng and deliver a fiery
eulogy. But at Tuesday's enormous procession -- which wound its way through the
scorching, shuttered streets of Gaza City -- ranking figures such as Mahmoud
Zahar and Ismail Haniyeh were not in attendance.
A relatively low-level
Hamas leader, Sheik Ahmad Bahar, presided at the funerals, pledging to "make
this conflict painful for the Zionists as well as us."