Just days after the illegal assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in Gaza - a crime under international law which provoked outrage from around the world (except the from the US government, which vetoed a UN resolution condeming the act) - seventy prominent Palestinian politicians and intellectuals have warned their fellow nationals that violent retaliation against the Israelis will play into Ariel Sharon's hands and damage the struggle for independence.

The signatories were placed in an advert in Al-Ayyam, the Palestinian Authority's newspaper. They called for Palestinians to refrain from violence and for the struggle against occupation to "rise again in a peaceful, wise large-scale uprising".

Hanan Ashrawi, the co-author of the Geneva accords commented that, "Even though people are in mourning and shock and under tremendous suffering they cannot respond in kind, because Sharon uses that as a pretext to inflict more violence on the Palestinian people."

"Resistance has to be redefined to be peaceful and non-violent. They cannot allow Sharon to set the agenda."

"Let's not fall into Sharon's trap. Let's show his moral and political bankruptcy by struggling for our moral right to end the occupation with peaceful means."

Hanan Ashwari