WITHIN hours of the killing of Abdel Aziz Rantissi by the Israelis, the Palestinian militant group Hamas chose a grey-bearded and softly spoken physician to become its third leader in just under four bloody weeks in the Gaza Strip.

The appointment of Dr Mahmoud Zahar, 53, was kept secret as he joined tens of thousands of Palestinians at the funeral of Dr Rantissi.

Dr Zahar is married with children. He was for years best known as a working doctor and the personal physician of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Hamas’s spiritual leader, who was killed in an Israeli missile attack last month.

But in a secret selection process Dr Zahar was chosen to lead the organisation in Gaza, its birthplace and main support base.

The announcement was kept secret, but Palestinian, Israeli and Western sources quickly confirmed that the Egyptian-educated doctor had assumed the leadership — and with it an automatic place at the top of Israel’s hit list.

“There were no real other candidates for the leadership in Gaza,” a Western diplomat said. “Most of them have been killed. Not surprisingly Hamas is not going to make the announcement public.”

Dr Zahar was certainly not intimidated yesterday when he joined 70,000 Hamas mourners paying their last respects to Dr Rantissi, who died on Saturday night when the car he was travelling in was hit by a missile fired from an Israeli helicopter gunship.

“You can see (the future of) the movement in the sea of people here today,” said Dr Zahar, who last year survived an Israeli assassination attempt that killed his son. “We are committed to the policy of resistance and we cannot be swayed. Hamas cannot be defeated. Hamas cannot be broken.”

That defiance was being challenged in Israel last night. After Sheikh Yassin’s death, Hamas warned Israel that it had opened “the gates of hell”, and after Dr Rantissi’s assassination the group vowed a “volcano of revenge”.

But so far the organisation responsible for pioneering suicide bombings against Israeli civilians has failed to strike back, and Israeli security officials believe its “decapitation” policy is working.

“The rest of the leadership are on the run. When they’re fleeing they can’t organise or perpetrate terrorist acts,” said a spokesman for Ariel Sharon, the Prime Minister. “We knew these targeted assassinations are not going to dismantle Hamas, but when the leaders spend more time on their protection or hiding out they lose their ability to operate.”

Despite international outrage at Dr Rantissi’s killing, Mr Sharon told cabinet colleagues he planned to continue striking terrorist organisations and their leaders. Ministers said that included Khaled Meshaal, Hamas’s external leader in Damascus, “the minute we have operational ability to do this”.

Killing Sheikh Yassin was easy as he followed the same routine each day. After assuming the leadership Dr Rantissi lived largely underground, appearing only when protected by crowds, but survived less than a month before the Israelis got him.

The outlook for Dr Zahar appears bleak. He has few places to hide from the prying eyes and ears of Israeli intelligence. Although Gaza’s narrow strip of land is teeming with more than a million Palestinians, the Israelis have built up an extensive network of informants who monitor the movements of key figures.

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