Ahmed Ismael Yassin
...he had already effectively stopped running the movement's day-to-day affairs several years ago due to his deteriorating health and relatively old age. Nonetheless, he remained until his death the most effective and eloquent spokesman of Hamas and the entire Palestinian Islamist camp, despite his severe physical disability.
Ahmed Ismael Yassin was born in 1938 in the now non- existent hamlet of Al-Joura, near the present-day Israeli town of Ashkelon -- or Askalan in Arabic. In 1948 the young Yassin was forced to flee along with his family and thousands of other refugees southwards to the Gaza Strip after Zionist forces overran his village and threatened to kill its inhabitants. This nightmarish experience seems to have had a particularly strong impact in shaping the psychological build-up of a boy who would later on become one of Israel's most trenchant enemies.
"I would fight my own brother if he took over my home. I don't fight Jews because they are Jews. I fight them because they have stolen and arrogated my land, home and orchards and condemned my people to everlasting misery," Yassin told foreign journalists inquiring about his implacable attitude towards Israel. Needless to say, his bitterness and sense of indignation were further enhanced by the abject poverty and rampant misery prevalent in the refugee camps of Gaza where he and his family lived during his teenage years.
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For Israel and its guardian-cum-ally the US, Yassin was an embodiment of terror and evil. For most Palestinians and the bulk of Arab and Muslim peoples, Yassin represented a symbol of resistance against a sinister military occupation.
Khaled Amayreh/Al-Ahram Mar.25-31.04
