Israel is unlikely to target Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh despite recent threats to kill leaders of Hamas if the group resumes suicide bombings, a senior Israeli defence official said on Friday.
Deadly Israeli shelling on the Gaza Strip last week prompted Hamas to scrap a 16-month-old truce and fire rockets into the Jewish state. The flare-up stirred concern of a return to Hamas suicide bombings and Israeli air strikes against Hamas chiefs.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has refused to rule out Haniyeh, a top Hamas leader, as a target. But the senior defence official said Haniyeh was not high on the hit-list due to Israel's belief he was not directly involved in attacks.
"I would say the chances of him (Haniyeh) being left alone for now are very good," the official, who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject, told Reuters. "Our assessment is that Haniyeh is not directing the terrorism. But there are contacts between him and the (Hamas) military wing," the official said.
The remarks suggested a change from Israel's past strategy of targeting Palestinian political leaders in response to violence by their loyalists during a more than 5-year-old uprising.
Late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat spent the last two years of his life under virtual house arrest and death threats by Israel, which accused him of ordering attacks. He denied it. Israeli air strikes killed Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, as well as senior Hamas leader Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, in 2004. Hamas was in the midst of a suicide-bomb campaign at the time but said Yassin and Rantissi had purely political functions.
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