BEIRUT, Nov. 5 -- Palestinian and Lebanese hard-liners fired machine guns and took to the streets in Beirut and Palestinian refugee camps across Lebanon to celebrate the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Hard-line leaders praised the killing as a 'real but insufficient revenge.' 'Today, our Palestinian people is living a real joy for the killing of this personality (Rabin) who had killed our children during a half century,' said Abu Imad, spokesman for the Islamic Jihad movement in Lebanon. For nearly 45 minutes, pistol shots and machine-gun fire lit the sky over the Lebanese capital, mainly from the Shiite-dominated southern suburbs -- a stronghold of the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah. People roamed the streets, blowing car horns and waving flags. Several hundred Hezbollah followers crowded the streets of southern suburbs, shouting anti-Israel slogans and 'Allah Akbar' (God is Great). They waved Hezbollah green and black flags and raised large pictures of Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah and Iranian leader Ali Khamenei. As soon as the news of Rabin's death was announced, hundreds of Palestinian refugees took to the narrow streets of the shantytown of Ein El Helweh, which is controlled by hard-liners opposed to peace with Israel. Women waved Palestinian flags while fighters danced and fired machine guns and rocket propelled grenades into the air, witnesses said. 'Allah Akbar' (God is Great) were shouted from mosques through loudspeakers and echoed across the camp, they said. Imad said the Islamic Jihad, whose leader Fathi Shkaki was allegedly assassinated by Israeli intelligence members last week in the Mediterranean island of Malta, praised Rabin's killing as 'a real but still insufficient revenge.' 'Today, the blood of Shkaki and all our martyrs was avenged,' Imad said.
'But the killing of Rabin will not satisfy our thirst to take real revenge for Shkaki's killing...The coming days will show our revenge.' Shkaki's successor and newly-elected Jihad leader Ramadan Abdallah had threatened Rabin to pay 'a dear price' for the slain Jihad chief. Abu Imad said he had no information that the Jihad group was behind the Israeli Premier assassination. Israeli authorities said the assassin was a 27-year-old Jewish extremist. Col. Munir Makdah, leader of the Black September 13 movement, also praised the death of 'this murderer who killed our children.' 'This will be the fate of every traitor to our cause,' said Makdah, who split from the mainstream Fatah movement and formed his own movement to protest the signing of the Palestinian-Israeli peace accord.
