GAZA CITY (Ma’an) -- Friday morning's assassination of a Hamas leader was an "attempt to cover up negotiations," party official Salah Al-Bardawil said in a statement sent from Gaza hours after the killing.
"These negotiations will lead to many important concessions," the official warned, saying the assassination was part of an Israeli plan to divert attention from the concessions Palestinian negotiators were making.
"The resistance cannot let pass the occupation's schemes against the Palestinian national project," Al-Bardawil said.
Conflicting accounts of the assassination of the Tulkarem Hamas leader were given by Palestinian security sources, witnesses and the Israeli military, which alleged variously that 38-year-old Iyad As’ad Shelbaya was shot in his home after Israeli forces abducted his brother and forced him to reveal the location, and that Shelbaya was shot out in the open during an arrest raid, and that he "ran toward [Israeli] forces," according to the military, and was shot after he intimidated soldiers.
Commenting on the assassination, Al-Bardawil said Hamas' battle with the occupation "will never end, we will fight them bitterly."
The party stated its opposition to the continued negotiations before they began, saying that President Mahmoud Abbas did not have a mandate to go forward with talks, first because his term ran out in January 2010, and second because he in no way represented the people of Gaza, who are governed by Hamas, a party that remains outside of the PLO.
