OxBlog

Monday, March 22, 2004

# Posted 6:18 PM by Patrick Belton  

ROUND-UP: Haaretz has a number of good pieces about the removal this morning of Sheikh Yassin: Shin Bet chief Dichter argued against Yassin's removal, saying that the strategic risks outweighed benefits; Yassin's strategic, moral, and organizational leadership was such that no one will be capable of filling his shoes; one commentator sees the possibility of fracture, with some splinter wings of Hamas perhaps aligning with Al Qa'ida. Thus one reporter:
Among those who will be in the new collective leadership are Mahmoud a-Zahar, who survived an assassination attempt last year and has kept a low profile since; Ismail Haniya, Yassin's bureau chief in recent years and another of the pragmatists who have been in close contact with the Palestinian Authority; Rantisi, who leads the hardline in the organization, is opposed to any cease-fire deal with the PA and rejects proposals by pragmatists to turn the movement into an international political organization, preferring to emphasize its military activities.

Rantisi, who has survived an Israeli assassination attempt, is the closest of the current leadership to the military wing, and his position has been greatly strengthened over the past few months, particularly without Abu Shnab as a counterweight. Indeed, as of now, there is no real counterweight to Rantisi.
Shimon Peres announced his opposition to the action against Yassin. WaPo offers up a passable review of Yassin's life. NYT draws attention to the different US and European responses to the action; while Europeans considered Yassin's removal (to my mind, dubiously - has anyone seen a fleshed-out argument?) as a violation of international law, the Americans limited their response to an indication it was "troubled" by this morning - the last, given that it followed by only hours an unreserved vote of support on television by the national security advisor for Israel's legal and political right to take out terrorist leaders, was undoubtedly a response to head off Arab and European criticism of the United States as being too solidly in Israel's camp.

UPDATE: Our friends at Crooked Timber give me grief for using the word "removal," wondering "And what does this new usage imply about companies who carry out furniture removals?"

I do balk, though, at referring to the killing of Sheikh Yassin as an "assassination." While I have great sympathy for Palestinian liberals, and I want always to be loudly in support of those who work toward a Middle East in which two reformist liberal democracies can live and prosper in peaceful trade with one another, Yassin brooks no sympathy from me. He was a terrorist, not an official of any properly understood political party or the Palestinian para-state, and the question of whether Israel was right to kill him lies only in the realm of strategic, not moral, debate. And so I balk at referring to him as assassinated. I do think we could all agree, though, on the somewhat more clinical and objective, and equally true, "dead."
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