Exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshal visits Gaza for first time

Exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshal visits Gaza for first time:

JERUSALEM — Exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshal, who survived an assassination attempt by Israel in 1997, made a triumphant visit to Gaza on Friday, his first time inside the territory that has been ruled by the militant Islamist group since 2007.

Meshal — who left his boyhood home in the West Bank for Jordan in 1967 and since then has visited the West Bank only once, in 1975 — kissed the ground after crossing into the Gaza Strip from Egypt at the Rafah border terminal.

“This is an historic day in my life,” Meshal said minutes after arriving, expressing a wish that “God will grant me martyrdom on the land of Palestine.”

Visibly emotional, he wiped away tears as he sat with Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister, at a brief welcome reception.

In a statement to the media, Meshal said he considered his arrival in Gaza his “third birth,” following his actual birth, in 1956, and the day he survived an Israeli assassination attempt by Israeli agents in Jordan 15 years ago.

“I pray to God that my fourth birth will be the day when all of Palestine is liberated,” Meshal said, ticking off areas Israel occupied after the Six-Day War in 1967, and then cities that have been part of the modern state of Israel since its founding in 1948.

“Gaza today, and after it Ramallah, and Jerusalem, and Haifa and Jaffa, God willing,” he said.

Meshal has spent his life moving from one Arab state to another. He and his family left Jordan for Kuwait soon after fleeing the West Bank, but he returned to Jordan after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait that led to the 1991 Persian Gulf War. In 1999, when Jordan outlawed Hamas, he and other leaders were expelled. Meshal lived in Qatar until 2001, when he moved to Damascus, Syria. He was based there until 10 months ago, when he returned to Qatar because of Syria’s civil war.

On Friday, after traveling to Gaza City, Meshal visited the home of the assassinated founder of Hamas, Sheik Ahmad Yassin, and was mobbed by an enthusiastic crowd gathered outside.

He was also expected to visit the home of Ahmed Jabari, the head of Hamas’s armed wing, who was killed last month in the Israeli airstrike that began an eight-day offensive by Israel’s military aimed at halting cross-border rocket attacks by Gaza militants.

On Saturday, Meshal is to address a mass rally marking the 25th anniversary of the founding of Hamas and “victory” in last month’s fighting with Israel, during which Hamas rockets landed near Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman, said Meshal’s visit was one of the achievements of November’s fighting, “a fruit of the victory of the resistance over the occupation.”

Islam Abdel Karim in Gaza contributed to this report.