Yassin, Rantisi deaths fuel Hamas crisis

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TEL AVIV -- The radical Palestinian group Hamas has been plunged into a leadership crisis after two of its founding visionaries, Sheik Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz Rantisi, were assassinated by Israeli forces less than a month apart, Palestinian observers said.

The two men had been at the helm of the Islamist terrorist group since its founding during the first Palestinian uprising of the late 1980s.

The duo molded the organization's identity as a religious resistance to Israeli troops and an alternative to Yasser Arafat's secular Palestine Liberation Organization.

"The organization has been shaken. When you lose two main leaders and founders, it's a loss on all accounts," said Ziyad Abu Amr, a Palestinian legislator and political science professor. "The movement needs to put its act together."

The Israeli assassination campaign had already forced Hamas' Gaza leadership underground, but now it has become cloaked in secrecy as never before. Just a day after Mr. Rantisi's killing, Hamas reportedly chose a replacement but refused to divulge the identity of the successor.

The tighter security might help the organization insulate its terrorist operations from Israeli infiltration, but it is not clear how the secrecy will affect the organization's hopes someday to govern in Gaza.

The group has enjoyed a surge in popularity among Palestinians since the beginning of the current uprising. As Israel moves ahead with its unilateral plan to pull out of the Gaza Strip, Hamas and Mr. Arafat's Fatah party have been discussing joint rule in the territory as a way of avoiding violent infighting.

But it remains to be seen whether an organization whose leaders are anonymous can someday manage the affairs of a Palestinian administration in Gaza.

Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said the confusion sown within Hamas proves that the assassination policy, which has been widely condemned abroad, is effective.

"They are under pressure and feel hunted," he said. "You can see the fear in the eyes."

But Palestinian analysts noted that Hamas has recovered from leadership crises before.

In 1993, Israel rounded up and deported all of the top Hamas figures to Lebanon. And for much of the 1990s, the group was without the guidance of Sheik Yassin, who was serving time in an Israeli jail. Neither of the setbacks stopped the organization from growing in influence.

Hamas faces a more basic and immediate challenge of retaliating for the two assassinations. Before Mr. Rantisi was killed, Hamas failed to make good on a promise to avenge Sheik Yassin's killing and now pressure is growing by the day, both inside and outside the group, for revenge.

"These two people were in the organization for many years, and had their fingers in every corner of the organization," said Ghazi Hamad, the editor of a weekly paper in Gaza and an associate of the Hamas leadership.

Mr. Hamad said he doesn't foresee a change in the organization's strategy, and that for now Hamas can rely on its policy-making body, known as the Shura Council, to fill the leadership void.