Ismail Haniyah, chosen by the militant group Hamas to serve as Palestinian prime minister, could be an assassination target if Hamas carries out suicide bombings, a former Israeli security chief said on Friday.

Avi Dichter, the former head of the Shin Bet internal security service and a possible future defence minister, also told the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper that Haniyeh would be arrested if he ever fell into the hands of the Israeli army.

Haniyeh brushed aside the comments as not worthy of a response. "We do not fear threats," he said.

Dichter told the Israeli daily that he does not "see a situation where Haniyeh will have immunity just because he is prime minister."

"If there will be a terror attack in which Israel decides to respond with a preventive step, then Haniyeh would be a legitimate target because Hamas could not carry out a terror attack without Haniyeh's authorisation," he said.

Dichter, the architect of Israel's policy of assassinating Palestinian militants, no longer holds a policy-making position but still wields clout within the centrist Kadima Party, which is expected to win the March 28 general election.

"(Haniyeh) was and remains a man of terror," Dichter said. "If Haniyeh turns up at a military checkpoint I believe that he would be arrested, interrogated and put on trial for being involved in terror attacks".

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Haniyeh denounced a five-day Israeli sweep through a West Bank refugee camp in which five Palestinians were killed.

The sweep in the Balata camp next to the city of Nablus was Israel's largest West Bank military operation since its summer pullout from the Gaza Strip. One of the dead was a top militant who said a day earlier that he would never be caught.

Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, condemned the operation and warned it would endanger a cease-fire that has been in effect for a year, according to the Palestinian WAFA news agency.

Before daybreak on Friday, soldiers opened fire on three Palestinians trying to enter Israel from Gaza, the military said.

Two were killed and one was wounded, Palestinian hospital officials said. They were unarmed, apparently trying to sneak into Israel to find work. One of those killed was the son of Hamas lawmaker Abdel Fattah Duhan, Palestinian security officials said.

Later on Friday, Israel's air force fired a missile at a car in northern Gaza. The army said militants in the car had been firing rockets at Israeli targets.

Source: China Daily