Israel's targeted killing of Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin this week marks the opening round of a new, more aggressive phase in the war against Palestinian terrorism. The stakes are high, but whether the army action will reduce or intensify the conflict is a matter of heated debate.

"This was a turning point, but in which direction we don't know," said Gerald Steinberg, a professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University. "It is much too early to predict how it is going to evolve."

Seeing it as a positive move was Ephraim Eitam, Israel's minister of housing and construction, who said that with the death of the 67-year-old quadriplegic, "a new era has been opened that says you [Hamas] will now have to find new leadership."

"You will have to find another leadership that will become a partner for negotiations because this is the reason behind the military operation," he told The Jewish Week by phone. "The current leadership has totally failed, we don't believe they ever would be partners, and that is why we have taken them out of the arena."

The appointment of Abdel Azziz Rantisi to succeed Yassin does not bode well for those looking for a more moderate Hamas. Rantisi has been outspoken in opposing any kind of cease-fire with Israel, and pledged this week: "We will fight them [Israel] until the liberation of Palestine, the whole of Palestine."

Ephraim Sneh, a Labor member of the Knesset, said he fears the killing of Yassin may prove to be "counterproductive," even though he is completely convinced of the "moral justification of the operation."

"The most important issue for us is who will govern, rule and control the Palestinian society -- Hamas or secular Palestinian leadership," he said. "If it is the Hamas and Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah... we have no chance for coexistence in the future.

"If we really mean to have one day coexistence with a Palestinian state, then we have to make sure that Hamas will never gain the upper hand in Palestinian society," Sneh continued. "But the assassination or killing of Sheik Yassin makes Hamas stronger and not weaker. I'm concerned about a Hamas state in Gaza. Although we decapitated the organization by killing the sheik, in the Palestinian street it became stronger. ...I don't think this action alone paves the way [for a Hamas state in Gaza], but no doubt it makes it easier."

Asked about the Israeli military's assertion that other Palestinian terrorist leaders may also be targeted by Israeli missiles, Sneh added that targeted killings must be carried out on a case-by-case basis.

"All those who are involved in terror operations have to be killed," he said. "This is an act of self-defense. But I tell you again in this matter -- and I am very familiar with these issues as an army general and deputy minister of defense and a member of the Israeli defense cabinet -- that everyday there are different considerations and there must be no sweeping policy."

Nonstop Attacks

Dore Gold, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said "Israel had no choice" but to kill Yassin "considering the fact that [Hamas] was determined to wage war against Israel's very existence."

"This is undoubtedly a major setback for Hamas," Gold said. "It has been constantly seeking to strike at Israel, regardless of whatever Israel does."

He apparently was referring to efforts by Egypt and the Palestinian Authority to work out a cease-fire with Israel last year that were consistently thwarted by Hamas. And Gold said Hamas has attempted repeatedly to carry out large-scale attacks against Israel, including the attempted bombing of the Pi-Glilot fuel depot, Israel's biggest fuel depot, in May 2002, and the March 15 attempt by two Palestinian suicide bombers to blow up chemical tanks in the port of Ashdod.

"The Ashdod attack did not come as a response to something Israel did," Gold said. "It came because the Hamas military command structure was interested in large-scale attacks against Israel. It came because it was in Hamas' interests. Hamas is an organization that is anti-civilization and wants the total destruction of Israel."

Regarding Sharon's proposed unilateral withdrawal from much of the Gaza Strip and scattered areas of the West Bank, Gold said the Israeli government does not want the Palestinians to view the withdrawal as a victory.

"The way to offset that Palestinian perception is for Israel to use both military and political means," he said.

Steinberg said Israel's warning to other Palestinian leaders, including Yasir Arafat, that they may be targeted next is a signal to them that "Israel is losing patience."

Despite the announcement that Rantisi has been selected Hamas' new leader in the Gaza Strip, Steinberg said he believes the group may divide into different factions because Yassin left no clear heir.

"Rantisi is a loudmouth who doesn't have the control of the organization, nor the respect or the abilities that Yassin had," he said. "Rantisi made a power grab and it is already generating angry responses."

Israeli Approval

Throughout Israel there was widespread approval of the Yassin killing. A poll in the Israeli newspaper Maariv found that 61 percent of Israelis favored the action. The newspaper Yediot Achronot found a 60 percent approval rating.

Irena Rudin, whose daughter, Simona, 17, was one of 21 killed by a Hamas suicide bomber at the Dolphinarium disco in Tel Aviv June 1, 2001, said it was a "relief" when she heard that Yassin had been killed.

"I was really glad to hear that," she said. "I can't hide it. It was simple justice. I though we had to do it two or three years ago. ...It's better late than never. It was the right thing to do."

Asked the reaction of her friends and neighbors, Rudin said "people panicked a little," fearing reprisal attacks. But, she added, "I don't think it can be worse. Right now, it is a nightmare for us."

Colette Avital, a Labor Party member of the Knesset, disagreed, saying she fears that the killing will "cause more problems in the short term and in the long term."

The reprisals will be different this time, she said, because "when you liquidate a man who is also a spiritual leader and one of the leaders of the Islamic world ...you can turn this into a religious conflict."

"We are not talking of the political head of the movement," Avital said. "Here we have beheaded an organization. It is in a way even worse than killing Arafat, who is a symbol and a leader of an organization. But Yassin is worse because he never recognized Israel and was considered a spiritual leader. So you are opening a lot of fronts."

Avital said she has no "tenderness or love" for Yassin, whom she said was "guilty as sin," but she said she fears that his successor will be even "tougher than he was."

"The younger generation knows no bounds," she said. "And now they have legitimacy when they say that all hell will break lose."

But Steinberg pointed out that this was the same cry Hamas has been shouting since the outbreak of violence began in September 2000.

World Reaction

Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said he was upset to hear some world leaders decry Israel's killing of Yassin. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw referred to Yassin as an "80-year-old man in a wheelchair."

"And Osama bin Laden is a diabetic and on dialysis," Hoenlein said. "This guy [Yassin] is a preacher of death who was responsible for the murder of 38 Americans just in the last 10 years since the Oslo Accords."

He pointed out that Yassin personally told a Palestinian woman who had cheated on her husband to turn herself into a suicide bomber to "redeem herself." She then strapped on explosives and blew herself up at the Erez Crossing in the Gaza Strip, killing four Israelis.

"They are fundamentally cowards because they send other people's children to die and never their own, and they tell others to reap the benefits of the next world and not them," Hoenlein said. "They attack the weak, the unaware and the most vulnerable, killing women, children and school kids. They are cowards. And what they count on is that they can break the spirit and gain their ends by intimidation and threats. Too often people succumb to that, and that only encourages more terrorism."

Amatzia Baram, a professor of Middle East history at the University of Haifa, said that although in the short term Hamas will seek to carry out a series of major attacks on Israel, in the long term the Yassin killing would prove decisive.

"The message Israel is trying to send to Hamas is that you can kill Israelis, but everybody rising from the ranks [of Hamas] will be killed," he said. "When this message is understood and internalized, I would say there is a chance -- no certainty -- that Hamas will lose some of its zeal and some of its militant spirit. This can happen in a year or two, not tomorrow."

But within a year the separation barrier will be complete and it, along with the loss of Hamas leadership, may make the group "less effective and less experienced and less zealous if they feel their lives are in danger," Baram said.

"The hope is that they will then find it useful to reach a cease-fire agreement with the Palestinian Authority. Israel can't reach a cease-fire agreement, but if the Palestinian Authority does and then turns around and says let's talk, that would be satisfactory to Israel."