Hamas the Islamic militant organisation to which Ayyash belonged probably cannot afford to respond passively to the death of its best known hero

Hamas, the Islamic militant organisation to which Ayyash belonged, probably cannot afford to respond passively to the death of its best known hero.Earlier, at the Martyrs’ Cemetery a few miles from Beit Lahiya, the 100,000 men who tramped through the mud behind a truck carrying Ayyash’s coffin appeared to leave no doubt. But Mrs Hamad interrupted him to say: “We have orders not to say anything.” We asked who had given the orders. “You don’t even have the right to ask that,” she said, as she made a grab for the nearest notebook.In Israel the Shin Bet security agency could barely contain its delight. It badly needed a success to divert people’s minds from its failure to protect Yitzhak Rabin, assassinated on 4 November. The Israeli papers ran a quote from Leah Rabin saying she wished her husband was alive to learn that Yahya Ayyash had been killed But the jubilation may be short- lived. In either case nobody doubted that Israeli security was behind the assassination.Our initial reception at Mrs Hamad’s house, undamaged by the 2oz bomb, was friendly. A man who refused to reveal his name said the small explosion did not make much noise “but neighbours thought they heard something and called the police”.

Israeli television reported that Osama Hamad had given the phone to Ayyash, while Palestinians said it was Mrs Hamad’s brother Kamal, a local building contractor. It was in her house, a three-storey building walled off from the street in Beit Lahiya refugee camp in the north of the Gaza strip, that Ayyash, the mastermind of the suicide bombing campaign against Israel, had sought refuge in the days before he died. Everything we wanted to know about how Ayyash died would be “revealed in a leaflet tomorrow”. The one point she wanted to make, she said, as she tore up another page of notes, was that her son Osama Hamad “had nothing to do with it”.Mrs Hamad has reason to feel nervous. Save for the occasional snowplough, four-wheel drive vehicle and demented driver, the roads of Washington were empty – though some people were spotted advancing down the middle of suburban streets on skis..

PATRICK COCKBURN

Gaza
The landlady of Yahya Ayyash, the Hamas bomber blown up in her house by a booby-trapped mobile phone last Friday, has a quick way with reporters’ notebooks: she rips them up. Three feet might have fallen by the time Washingtonians get out of bed today, the experts said, exceeding the record for this century, set in 1922, of 28ins (71cm).The initial impact of the snow, which fell without respite all day yesterday, was felt mostly among people who had entertained notions of travel – even to the local supermarket. If predictions were correct that the snow would continue to fall through the night until this morning, the blizzard looked likely to break all records for this century. With snow coming down at an average of one inch (2.5cm) an hour, central Washington was covered with a foot and half of snow by yesterday afternoon. JOHN CARLIN

Washington
The politicians who run the world’s most powerful country learnt the humbling lesson yesterday that hard as they strive to shape the course of humanity they cannot restrain the whims of Mother Nature.As if to underline the colossal presumption of the attempt to balance the US national account in seven years, presupposing as that does an ability to anticipate what will happen to the world’s economy between now and the end of 2002, President Bill Clinton and Republican leaders were forced to call off planned budget negotiations yesterday because of bad weather.What was more, Democrat and Republican leaders having agreed on Saturday night to reopen the government after three weeks of virtual paralysis, the heaviest snowfall in Washington in years looked certain to prevent the vast majority of government employees from going back to work today.The National Weather Service said yesterday that the snowstorm, which struck Washington on Saturday evening, was of “historic proportions”.