GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — In a posthumous letter released Tuesday, Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin defended violent attacks on Israel and called for Arabs to support insurgents fighting to oust the U.S.-led occupation force in Iraq.

The letter by Yassin, who was assassinated by Israel on Monday, was addressed to participants at an Arab summit scheduled to convene in Tunisia next week and was posted on the Hamas website Tuesday.

The date Yassin wrote the letter was not given, but he typically prepared messages on the eve of the annual Arab summits.

Yassin, Hamas' ideologue and spiritual leader, was by far the most prominent Palestinian targeted by Israel in 3½ years of violence.

In his letter, Yassin called on summit participants to support Palestinian attacks against Israel.

"Palestinian land is Arab Muslim land," Yassin wrote. "It was occupied by the force of weapons by the Zionist Jew and will only be returned with the force of weapons."

Hamas advocates the destruction of the Jewish state and its replacement with an Islamic one. It has claimed responsibility for most of the 112 suicide bombings that have killed more than 450 Israelis during the current Palestinian uprising.

Yassin's letter also called on Arab leaders to work for the defeat of U.S. forces from Iraq, linking the struggle there to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"We urge you to offer all kinds of support to the Iraqi people so they can liberate themselves from the American occupation, because a victory for Iraq and its people is a victory for Palestine and the Palestinians," he wrote.

Before the American invasion of Iraq, its leader, Saddam Hussein, was one of the Arab world's strongest supporters of Palestinians. He regularly made lump-sum payments to surviving family members of suicide bombers and provided financial assistance for the families of bombers made homeless in Israeli reprisals.