By Jeffrey Heller JERUSALEM, Feb 5 (Reuters) - A senior member of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's party urged the Israeli government on Tuesday to order the assassination of Hamas political leaders in response to a bombing in Israel claimed by the Islamist group. Despite the suicide attack in the southern town of Dimona on Monday, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators held talks hours later, in a reaffirmation of U.S.-backed efforts to achieve a statehood deal. Kadima party lawmaker Tzachi Hanegbi, chairman of parliament's Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee, said Hamas had refrained from carrying out attacks in Israel for years and the bombing marked a change of policy. "Because of this, the Israeli government should also change its policy and we should no longer allow Hamas's leadership to enjoy immunity," Hanegbi told Israel Radio. Hamas's armed wing said it was responsible for the bombing that killed an Israeli woman in the southern Israeli town of Dimona on Monday, the first such attack claimed by the group since 2004. The bomber and an accomplice, shot by police before he could detonate his explosives belt, were also killed. Hamas, an Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip and opposes Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's peace talks with Israel, called the Dimona bombing retaliation for Israeli raids. Israel assassinated top Hamas leaders Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi in the Gaza Strip in 2004, killings that Hanegbi said had a "direct effect on the motivation of the Hamas leadership to continue to carry out suicide attacks." The Israeli military has since largely refrained from targeting Hamas's political wing but has struck against the Islamist movement's field commanders. "(Hamas's political leaders) have evidently forgotten the bitter fate (of Yassin and Rantissi) and therefore we should add the current leaders of the organisation to that list," Hanegbi said. Commenting on Hanegbi's remarks, Taher al-Nono, a spokesman for Gaza-based Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, said: "The threats are part of continuing Israeli terrorism and crimes aimed at achieving political gains. "We will not hide or be frightened by these threats." (Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza and Adam Entous in Jerusalem, Editing by Dominic Evans)
Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert attends a session of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, in Jerusalem February 4, 2008. REUTERS/Gil Cohen Magen (JERUSALEM) ...
