Bomb kills Hamas leader, his two wives and children

ISRAEL'S air force yesterday dropped a one-ton bomb on a Hamas leader's house in Gaza, killing him and 11 other people.

It was the first assassination of a senior Hamas figure since the bombardment of Gaza began six days ago.

The air-strike killed Nizar Rayan, a Hamas founder who had close ties to its military wing, and reduced to rubble the four-storey building in the Jebalya refugee camp in which he lived. Two of his wives and four of his children were also killed.

Haim Ramon, an Israeli cabinet minister, told Israel Television: "We are trying to hit everyone who is a leader."

Hamas MP Mushir al-Masri vowed that the militant group would use new tactics in response in its battle with Israel.

The war is deepening divisions and fuelling tensions between Arabs and Jews in Israel. In the mixed Arab-Jewish town of Lod, south of Tel Aviv, emotions are high among Arab residents over the more than 400 Palestinian fatalities from the Israeli bombardments.

"The Israeli operation in Gaza arouses in me, and I think in every witness, revulsion," said Yusuf Sharaya, a butcher, as he came out of prayers at a mosque.

The Gaza war has highlighted that the two sides inhabit different conceptual and emotional worlds.

In a kosher fast-food restaurant near Lod's municipality that was adorned with pictures of still-revered deceased rabbis, Itamar Gutman, a school administrator, became angry when asked about civilian casualties on the Palestinian side. "I have parents in Ashdod and they had missiles shot at them today.

"I feel sorry for them," he said of Gaza civilians. "But what can you do? In all wars there are such losses."

The two communities are on different wavelengths, with many of the Arabs in Lod, as throughout the Arab world, tuned in to al-Jazeera broadcasts which highlight the death and destruction in Gaza.

The Jews yesterday were watching Hebrew-language channels that focused on Hamas missile attacks, which have turned the country's south into a zone of anxiety and fear.

But in an Arab-owned clothing store, worker Ahmed Saadi said as he watched al-Jazeera: "The (Hamas] missiles do not do anything. They are just metal without explosive matter."

Mr Al-Saadi was born in Gaza but married an Israeli citizen and himself acquired citizenship. His father is still in Gaza.

"They are knowingly killing people who did nothing," he said of the bombings. "It's like when you throw a water balloon – you know that not only the place the balloon hits is going to get wet."