Just talked about this the toher day didn't we.......................
- UPI
THOUSANDS of Palestinians were on the brink of civil war last night as the people of Gaza prepared to bury a young Hamas activist shot dead by Yassir Arafat?s police.
The 18-year-old supporter of the radical group was killed in the mêlée after a local mosque mobilised an army of young men to protect Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the Hamas leader, from arrest.
?For now there is a deal between the two sides to stop Palestinian fighting Palestinian,? Amin Lel-Baloul, a 19-year-old local resident, said. ?But no one knows how long it will last. The big test will come on Friday morning when they are due to bury the Hamas supporter killed by Arafat?s bullets.?
The victim, Mohammed Silmi, was reported to have been involved in the riot that prevented the police taking the sheikh away. He was shot in the back.
The tragedy encapsulates Mr Arafat?s dilemma. ?If he cracks down meaningfully on Hamas, he is going to be faced with an uprising from their supporters,? one UN worker said.
?If he does not, he faces certain continuing Israeli attacks, panic among his people and the risk that they will topple him for someone else.?
According to a Hamas official, the sheikh agreed for the time being to remain under house arrest and he stayed behind his unguarded front door. He refused to give interviews and his telephone was switched off. His family were free to come and go.
Painted on an outside wall is a huge mural depicting two crossed AK47 assault rifles over a painting of Jerusalem?s Islamic holy places and the slogan that Hamas equals martyrdom in battle. The sheikh has an almost mystic power over his teenage supporters: a number of them declared with bravado a willingness to blow themselves to pieces at his behest. He is the most senior militant that Mr Arafat has so far attempted to detain.
?Palestinian police have informed Sheikh Ahmed Yassin that he has been put under house arrest and that he is barred from all outside contacts,? a Palestinian official said.
His restriction to a benign form of house arrest appeared unlikely to satisfy the Israeli authorities, who blame him for scores of Jewish deaths and would prefer to see him in jail.
At one point during the violence in which Mohammed Silmi died ? some of the worst between Palestinians since the near civil war in Gaza of 1996, the last time that Mr Arafat took on Hamas ? the sheikh appeared briefly on his doorstep, wearing his white headdress.
It was an attempt to quell rumours that he had been snatched by Israeli commandos under cover of darkness and whisked away to an interrogation centre.
?If that had been true, you wouldn?t have been able to count the number of men coming forward to volunteer as suiciders,? Ibrahim Adwan, an English language student from Gaza?s Islamic University, said.
Raanan Gissin, chief spokesman for Israel?s Prime Minister, emphasised that the move against Sheikh Yassin, which was ordered within hours of President Bush demanding that Mr Arafat bring murderers to justice, was not sufficient to satisfy Israel.
?That is not stopping the suicide bombers,? he said amid disclosures that Israel had caught two more elsewhere in Gaza on their way to a mission. ?They have got to stop the ones doing the crimes.?
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