Hamas tells Palestinians to prepare for war

JERUSALEM (Reuter): The militant Islamic organization Hamas vowed yesterday to step up attacks against Israel and told Palestinians in the occupied territories to prepare for war.

"We call on our heroic merchants to stock up on supplies and food and we urge our people in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to store basic necessities because an atmosphere of real war will engulf the Zionist soldiers and enemy commanders in the coming days," Hamas' military wing said in a faxed statement.

The wing, the Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, also told Jewish settlers to leave the occupied territories or face attacks by rockets which it said it had recently acquired.

Hamas said its suicide car bomb in the northern town of Afula on Wednesday which killed seven Israelis and wounded 50 was a first reprisal for the massacre of some 30 Palestinians by a Jewish settler in Hebron on Feb. 25. It vowed to carry out four more reprisals.

"You turned our Eid al-Fitr into a black day and we swore to turn your Independence Day into Hell...(Afula was) our first response to the Hebron massacre, and the other four (attacks) are on the way," the statement, in Arabic, said.

Eid al-Fitr, the most important Moslem feast, was overshadowed by the 40-day Moslem mourning period for the Hebron victims. Israelis celebrate the 1948 founding of their state on April 14.

"Our last word, and in order not to be accused of killing Israeli civilians, we call on settlers to move out of the West Bank and Gaza because the Qassam Brigades will blast their houses with rockets with which God has recently blessed us."

Hamas, which opposes PLO-Israeli peace talks, has told PLO chairman Yasser Arafat it would force Israel to evacuate settlers and soldiers from Gaza, Jericho and Hebron if he suspended the talks for a year.