Gaza: A Deal, A Hit

By Massimo Calabresi; Jamil Hamad; Scott MacLeod; Matt Rees

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict was rocked by literal and metaphorical explosions last week. On Saturday night an Israeli missile struck a car carrying Abdel Aziz Rantisi, the vitriolic leader in Gaza of the militant Palestinian group Hamas. Rantisi, a pediatrician who helped found the group in the 1980s, was killed along with a bodyguard and one other companion.

Hundreds of outraged Palestinians quickly crowded around the wreckage, some waving bloodstained clothing lifted from the gutted car, others covering their palms in the blood that had pooled inside. Muhammed Barakeh, a left-wing Arab member of the Israeli Assembly, charged that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had ordered the strike to bolster his standing with rightist supporters. But an Israeli military spokesman countered that Rantisi had been "directly responsible for the deaths of scores of Israelis." The assassination came just hours after a Palestinian suicide bomber killed himself and an Israeli guard at a Gaza border crossing. Hamas was one of two groups that claimed responsibility.

The hit was a continuation of Israel's stated policy of targeting Hamas leaders. It killed the group's founder and spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, in March, drawing worldwide condemnation and even U.S. disapproval. "We are all waiting for the last day of our life," Rantisi said then. "If it is by an Apache [helicopter] or by cardiac arrest, I prefer that it will be by Apache." Indeed, Shin Bet, the Israeli intelligence service, had long tracked Rantisi--he survived a rocket attack last year--and Saturday night, when he drove on a Gaza street without the usual buffering entourage of civilians, the Israelis seized the opportunity.

The timing of the strike could not have been more provocative. In a fastidiously scripted statement derived from months of negotiation, President George W. Bush had just endorsed Sharon's controversial plan to annex territory in the West Bank and deny Palestinian refugees the right to return to Israel. In exchange, Sharon promised to withdraw Israeli troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip. The agreement broke with decades-old U.S. policy. But it appears that shift arose at least in part from the Bush Administration's being outmaneuvered by Sharon at the negotiating table.

The Israeli Prime Minister needs U.S. support for his plan, partly to sell it to hard-liners in his Likud Party, and he played his cards shrewdly. He threatened to cancel his trip to Washington if Bush's statement didn't explicitly support his stand on the refugee issue. Late on April 11, his top negotiator, Dov Weissglass, called Secretary of State Colin Powell and said negotiations had reached an impasse. Weissglass said Sharon, due to leave for Washington within hours, would cancel his trip if the matter wasn't resolved. "I can't solve the language right now," Powell told Weissglass, according to a top aide, "but I give you my word ... we'll work something out." What Powell apparently didn't know was that the Israeli team was bluffing: the original, vague language on refugees was all Sharon really needed for political cover. "That would have been enough," says a senior Likud Cabinet member.

As it is, the deal has infuriated Arab leaders, who denounce it as an Israeli land grab. Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak, who had met with Bush only days before, told Powell that the U.S. had prejudiced the outcome of Arab-Israeli negotiations. "It's a disaster," an Arab diplomat told TIME. "It came as a huge surprise." Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal says it proves that "resistance is the only way."

The Rantisi strike is certain to intensify Palestinian fury against Israel and the U.S. "The assassination was the outcome of the Bush-Sharon meeting," said Abdullah Shami, a leader of Islamic Jihad. A Palestinian official in Gaza said protesters were calling for retaliation against "American interests." U.S. officials take a different view. They insist Arab leaders had prior warning of the pact. "The rest of the [peace] process is going nowhere fast," notes a senior State Department official. "This is something real--moving people, tanks and troops." Perhaps, but just days after the deal was made came the bloody reminder that removing violence from Gaza is entirely another matter.

--By Massimo Calabresi, Jamil Hamad, Scott MacLeod and Matt Rees