GAZA, Dec. 31 -- Leaders of a key group within Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization said Sunday "resistance" against Israel was the only way to establish an independent Palestinian state.
"Fighting and resistance are Fatah's choices," said the group's Secretary General Ahmed Helles in Gaza. "We are able to make Israeli losses higher in Tel Aviv, Gaza, West Bank or elsewhere as long as Israel continues its policy of aggressions and assassinations."
He was addressing thousands of Fatah leaders and supporters who gathered to demand more confrontations with Israel on the group's 36th anniversary.
"Continue your great Intifada and confront the Israel military occupation," Helles said as armed Fatah members -- their faces covered with black masks -- fired their marching guns into the air.
"We consider ourselves in a state of Jihad and resistance until we remove the (Israeli) occupation and establish our independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital," Helles said.
"The assassinations will never scare us," Helles, who is better known as Abu Maher, said. "The sieges, closures and helicopter gunships would never make us change our minds to stop the resistance."
Earlier Sunday, Israeli and Palestinian radios reported that a leading Fatah member was shot dead by an Israeli army undercover unit outside his home in the West Bank town of Tulkarem.
The victim, Thabet Thabet, 45, was an employee at one of the Palestinian authority's ministries and also head of Fatah security in Tulkarem. He died in hospital.
Arafat's advisor Nabil Abu Rudeineh accused Israel of targeting Palestinians since the clashes first began Sept. 28.
"These aggressive assassinations would lead to catastrophic reactions and serious results and would destroy all the Arab and international efforts to revive and save the stalled peace process," Abu Rudeineh told reporters.
Thabet's killing is the first ever of a high-ranking official from a Palestinian movement. Israel said Thabet led a militant Fatah group that attacked Israeli soldiers and Jewish settlers. It had said earlier that it would target individuals it believed were responsible for the violence rather than Palestinian civilians.
More than 350 people have been killed since the violence erupted, the vast majority of them Palestinian.
