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Hamas leader warns Israel to follow truce
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-04-01 11:24

BEIRUT, Lebanon - A top official of the militant Hamas group threatened Thursday to attack Israel if it violates a cease-fire, as the radical movement marked one year since the death of its spiritual leader in an Israeli rocket attack.

Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah gestures during a rally in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday March 31, 2005, to commemorate the first anniversary of the death of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, seen on poster at right, founder of militant group Hamas, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza on March 22, 2004. [AP]

Hamas political leader Khaled Mashaal, who is based in Damascus, warned that the truce he and other Palestinian militia leaders agreed to would founder if Israel resumed its attacks on militants, failed to release Palestinian prisoners, or in any way harmed the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, one of the holiest sites in Islam.

"If (our) conditions, on top of ... the release of prisoners and ceasing all kinds of aggression, are not met, we will no longer abide" by the truce, Mashaal told hundreds of Palestinians rallying in Beirut.

They resonded by chanting: "May God protect you Mashaal so that you bring death to Israel."

Lebanese Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah also attended the demonstrators, who'd gathered to remember Sheik Ahmed Yassin, Hamas' spiritual founder, killed in an Israeli rocket attack in the Gaza Strip last year.

Palestinian militant groups including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, responsible for scores of bloody attacks against Israel in recent years, agreed this month to halt attacks on the Jewish state for the rest of the year, provided Israel halts its military activity against them.

Israel has promised to respect the truce as long as the situation remains quiet.

"This truce is a period for pause, and to avoid destruction and sabotage," Mashaal said.

Mashaal also warned extremists not to touch the compound in Jerusalem's Old City, home to the Al Aqsa and Dome of the Rock mosques, and the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest shrine.

Jewish extremists have warned they may force their way onto the site, known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sancturary, in an attempt to sabotage Israel's planned withdrawal this summer from the Gaza Strip, and part of the West Bank.

In his address to the crowd Nasrallah challenged the U.S. to send troops to Lebanon to disarm his group and Palestinians in refugee camps.

Wshington, which considers Hezbollah a terrorist organization, has pressed for its members to be disarmed, along with Syria's entire troop withdrawal from Lebanon.

"I wish they would come," said Nasrallah whose group spearheaded a guerrilla war against Israel that ended with the Jewish state's withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000.

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