Hamas support grows after Israelis shoot militant leader

Mohammed Abu Tir, number two on Hamas's national list of parliamentary candidates, had arrived in good time to pay his condolences to the dead 24-year-old's tearful brother Ziad. As the January rain began to fall, they kissed three times before Ziad Ayyadeh, 36, declared: "It is a positive thing because people now will vote for Hamas."

The Israeli army said Thabet Ayyadeh, a leader of Hamas's military wing, was shot dead in the early hours of yesterday when he opened fire, slightly wounding a soldier, as he ran out of a house which the army had been surrounding in Tulkarem with the intention of arresting him.

His older brother reminded the Hamas leader that the dead man had not been the family's first "martyr". For in November 2001, another brother, Moayed, who at the age of 16 had met Mohammed Abu Tir in jail during the latter's 20 year imprisonment, had blown himself up injuring two Israeli commandos. "You were his teacher," he told the candidate respectfully. "You were responsible for forming his character."

Mr Abu Tir replied that he saw the two dead brothers as "sons" and added: "They did their duty. The blood of martyrs is precious to us." He was quick to add: "We have not come here to use the incident for the election. I participate in events like this without elections."

Nevertheless Mr Abu Tir's presence at this West Bank funeral was a reminder that for all Hamas's appeal to voters who were fed up with the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority and its reputation for inefficiency and corruption, its leading candidates, fighting under the banner of "Change and Reform", were making no effort to distance themselves from the faction's past record of armed militancy.

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http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article339307.ece