Hamas says ‘collaborators’ were behind Faqha assassination
Terror group arrests ‘several’ suspects in killing of top commander; officials say they don’t want escalation with Israel
Avi Issacharoff, The Times of Israel's Middle East analyst, fills the same role for Walla, the leading portal in Israel. He is also a guest commentator on many different radio shows and current affairs programs on television. Until 2012, he was a reporter and commentator on Arab affairs for the Haaretz newspaper. He also lectures on modern Palestinian history at Tel Aviv University, and is currently writing a script for an action-drama series for the Israeli satellite Television "YES." Born in Jerusalem, he graduated cum laude from Ben Gurion University with a B.A. in Middle Eastern studies and then earned his M.A. from Tel Aviv University on the same subject, also cum laude. A fluent Arabic speaker, Avi was the Middle East Affairs correspondent for Israeli Public Radio covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the war in Iraq and the Arab countries between the years 2003-2006. Avi directed and edited short documentary films on Israeli television programs dealing with the Middle East. In 2002 he won the "best reporter" award for the "Israel Radio” for his coverage of the second intifada. In 2004, together with Amos Harel, he wrote "The Seventh War - How we won and why we lost the war with the Palestinians." A year later the book won an award from the Institute for Strategic Studies for containing the best research on security affairs in Israel. In 2008, Issacharoff and Harel published their second book, entitled "34 Days - The Story of the Second Lebanon War," which won the same prize.
Hamas said on Wednesday that Palestinians collaborating with Israel were directly involved in the assassination of one of its commanders in the Gaza Strip last month.
Interior Ministry spokesman Iyad al-Bozum said “several collaborators were arrested” after investigators determined “their direct role in the assassination” of Mazen Faqha on March 24.
Hamas’s prosecutor general Ismail Jaber said that those found guilty of aiding Israel would be executed “in the coming days”.
Hamas sources in Gaza told the Times of Israel that they have no doubt that Israel was behind the killing of Faqha, a terror chief who orchestrated suicide bombings in the second intifada. But they assessed that their group has no interest in escalating attacks against Israel at the moment and will therefore refrain from responding harshly to the assassination.
The sources said that Yahya Sinwar, recently elected to head Hamas in the Gaza Strip, has made it clear that he does not want to escalate the situation with Israel, partly because he is afraid that any confrontation with the IDF will lead to his own assassination.
Other Palestinian sources revealed to The Times of Israel new details of the killing. They said that Faqha was in his car when he was hit several times by gunfire. He then fell forward onto the wheel and the car continued to roll forward, they said.
His wife, interviewed in Arabic media, said that the family had just come back from a day out. They arrived at their house in the Tel el-Hawa neighborhood in southwestern Gaza City. Faqha then dropped off his wife and children at the door and went to park the car. When he didn’t return right away his wife assumed he was chatting with one of the neighbors.
The source added that even though Hamas thought at first that security cameras on the street had been disabled, it subsequently found that the cameras were recording, and has taken the footage for examination.
So far dozens of people have been detained by Hamas, the sources said, on suspicion that they collaborated with Israel in the assassination. However, so far Hamas has not gotten to the bottom of it.
Hamas also tightly restricted access out of the enclave following the March 24 assassination, which it blamed on the Mossad intelligence agency.
The measure remained in place on Wednesday despite calls from NGOs and human rights groups to lift it.
The restrictions have stopped male patients aged from 15 to 45 from using the territory’s sole crossing for people to enter Israel to receive medical treatment, Human Rights Watch said.
Exits by sea are also barred despite demands from fishermen preparing for one of the year’s most productive periods.
Faqha, who was jailed for life for organizing a 2002 suicide bombing in which nine Israelis were killed, was released along with more than 1,000 other Palestinian security prisoners in exchange for IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, who was held captive by Hamas for five years.
Khalil al-Haya, Hamas’s deputy chief in the Gaza Strip, said after the assassination that only Israel would have had something to gain from the death, Reuters reported.
Originally from a small village in the West Bank, Faqha headed the Hamas office in Gaza tasked with launching terror attacks against Israel from and in the West Bank. His subordinates in the branch specialized in recruiting suicide attackers, collecting weapons and preparing explosive devices.
Faqha, 38, was responsible for sending a suicide bomber to carry out an attack in northern Israel in 2002 in which nine people were killed and 52 were wounded.
He was captured by the IDF and Shin Bet security services that year in his home village of Toubas in the northern West Bank.
He had previously been involved in several other attacks.
Faqha was serving nine life sentences for planning the deadly 2002 terror attack.
AFP contributed to this report.
