Jamal Abu Samhadana

On 20 April 2006, Abu Samhadana was appointed Director General of the Executive Force, a new security forces in Gaza, by Said Seyam, Interior Minister of the Palestinian National Authority's new Hamas-led government.[3][4] Abu Samhadana was quoted as saying that "We have only one enemy. They are Jews. We have no other enemy. I will continue to carry the rifle and pull the trigger whenever required to defend my people."[5]

The appointment "sparked new criticism from the U.S. and Israel and intensified the struggle for control of some 70,000 Palestinian security forces" between Hamas and President Mahmoud Abbas.[6] Abbas subsequently issued a decree banning the formation of the Executive Force that Abu Samhadana was to have headed.[7] However, Hamas defied the President's decree and proceeded with the nomination and the formation of the force.

Although Israel acknowledged that Hamas was largely sticking to a ceasefire,[8] on 8 June 2006, he was assassinated, along with at least three other PRC members, by four missiles fired by Israeli Apache helicopters, guided by Israeli reconnaissance drones, at a PRC camp in Rafah.[9][10]

At his funeral Samhadana’s supporters called for revenge.[11] Hours after his assassination rockets were fired at Sderot in Israel.[12] The IDF retaliated by bombarding the launch sites on a Gaza beach. During the bombardment period, the civilian Ghalia family was all but wiped out in an explosion.[13] Analysts trace the Samhadana assassination to the rocket fire (on Sderot), through a series of IDF shellings, rocket attacks and commando raids on Gaza that killed over three dozen people, mostly civilians, to the capture of Israeli Corporal Gilad Shalit on June 25.[8] Two days after Shalit's capture, the IDF launched Operation Summer Rains killing over 400 Palestinians and wounding 650.[8]

• On Patrol with the Killer Israel Dreads Hala Jaber, Sunday Times, 29 December 2002.