"Sheikh Yassin is marked for death, and he should hide himself deep underground where he will not know the difference between day and night. And we will find him in the tunnels, and we will eliminate him," Zeev Boim told the radio late Thursday.
The radio and Israeli newspapers said the military believes Yassin, who was already unsuccessfully targeted by Israel's army, personally ordered the suicide bombing Wednesday that killed four Israelis at the Erez crossing point from Gaza.
But Yassin was quick to deny any direct involvement in attacks by Hamas, saying the Israelis "know that Sheikh Yassin has nothing to do with military action, but they are seeking a pretext to reassure their people and cover up their failure.
"Death threats do not frighten us, because we are in search of martyrdom," he told reporters as he arrived at a mosque near his home for the weekly Friday prayers.
"They will have a price to pay for any crime they commit".
Yassin said he was being used as a "scapegoat".
"They failed to defend themselves and are looking for a scapegoat to justify their failure," Sheikh Yassin said from his wheelchair, while also ruling out any truce in attacks on Israel.
"A truce is out of the question. We accepted one in the past but the enemy did not respect it," he said, referring to a unilateral Palestinian ceasefire declared in late June that lasted only seven weeks.
On Wednesday, Yassin welcomed the fact that the Erez attack was the first to be carried out by a woman follower of his movement.
"The fact that a woman took part for the first time in a Hamas operation marks a significant evolution for the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades," the movement's armed wing, Yassin told a small group of journalists.
The Palestinian Authority warned Israel yesterday against resuming so-called targeted killings of Palestinian militants.
"A resumption of the policy of liquidation will put back the region to square zero and will lead to an escalation," Nabil Abu Rudeina, chief advisor to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, said.
Meanwhile, a close adviser to Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz, reserve General Amos Gilad, would not be drawn when asked whether Yassin was now a target for assassination.
"We should never announce in advance what our intentions are," Gilad told the radio, branding Yassin as the "supreme leader of crime".
"We will use all means necessary to attack terrorism," the general said, while attributing the relative calm in the Palestinian uprising last month to the fact that Hamas' leadership had been "partly liquidated".
Yassin, one of the founders of Hamas, was lightly wounded on September 6 when Israeli warplanes targeted an apartment he was visiting in Gaza City along with Hamas officials.
The last attempted assassination of a Hamas official was on September 10 when senior political leader Mahmud al-Zahar was wounded in an Israeli air strike on his house, which left two other Palestinians dead. – Sapa-AFP.
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