Israel threatened the top leader of Hamas.
Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter said that as part of Israel’s fight against Hamas rocket salvoes from Gaza, the group’s exiled politburo chief Khaled Meshaal could be assassinated.
“Khaled Meshaal is not immune, not in Damascus nor anywhere else,” Dichter told Army Radio, adding that he is convinced that Israel’s security services will “dispatch him at the first opportunity, despite the complexity, the sensitivity and the fact that he is not located here across the fence, which will make things much harder.”
Meshaal survived an Israeli assasination attempt in Jordan in 1997 and is now based in Syria.
Israel’s air force bombed the Gaza home of a Hamas lawmaker Sunday, killing four but not the intended target, indicating that it was no longer limiting such strikes to the group’s gunmen and field commanders. One of Dichter’s Cabinet colleagues, Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, called for all Hamas leaders to be targeted unless the rocket attacks from Gaza cease.
“I make no distinction between those who carry out attacks and those who give orders,” Ben-Eliezer told Israel Radio. “I say we have to put them all in the cross hairs.”
