A militant leader appointed to a senior security position in the Hamas-led Palestinian government said on Friday he would not abandon the fight against Israel which has long sought to kill him. Jamal Abu Samhadana, high on Israel's most wanted list as leader of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), was appointed on Thursday to supervise the Interior Ministry and set up a new police force from militants to crack down on anarchy and chaos. "Factions and security services should unite in one trench against the daily Israeli aggression against our people," Abu Samhadana told Reuters in an interview.Israeli officials said Abu Samhadana was still in the army's sights despite his senior appointment in the government led by the Islamist Hamas movement. The militant group, which is sworn to Israel's destruction, took office last month after winning a Palestinian parliamentary election in January which gave it control of the government. Israel, which has killed dozens of militants in air strikes, has tried unsuccessfully to kill Abu Samhadana several times. "We will continue to pursue him. He is a terrorist and the fact that he has received a senior role in the Palestinian Authority does not make him immune," said a senior Israeli official who declined to be identified.
The 43-year-old leader of a faction that has carried out bomb and rocket attacks against Israel since a Palestinian uprising began in 2000 said his first order of business would be amalgamating militants in the security forces. His appointment was widely seen as an attempt by Hamas to strengthen its grip on the ministry which controls several security agencies, especially after Abbas recently appointed one of his loyalists, Rashid Abu Shbak, as its director-general.