Big Raid May Be Near After Suicide Bombing Kills 14
New York Times, April 1, 2002
April 1, 2002
Big Raid May Be Near After Suicide Bombing Kills 14
By JAMES BENNET
JERUSALEM, Monday, April 1 — Calling Yasir Arafat "the enemy of the
entire free world," Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared Israel on Sunday
to be in a war. He spoke after a suicide bomber blew himself apart in a
restaurant in the seaside city of Haifa, killing at least 14 other people,
while Israel was tightening its ring of tanks and rifles around the Palestinian
leader.
Mr. Sharon has made similarly bellicose statements
about Mr. Arafat in the past, but his terse remarks on Sunday night seemed
intended to prepare Israel and the world for a major new assault on the
West Bank, and possibly for a raid into Mr. Arafat's office itself.
"The state of Israel is in a war, a war against
terrorism," he said. "This is a war over our home."
Israeli officials have said Mr. Arafat is hiding
wanted men in the few rooms he still controls in his crumbling compound
in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
By early this morning, Israeli forces had taken
up positions on the outskirts of Tulkarm, in the West Bank, the Israeli
military said.
Israeli radio reports said that tanks and armored
vehicles had also advanced closer to Bethlehem, but those reports could
not be confirmed.
Late Sunday night, a column of Israeli tanks and
armored bulldozers entered Palestinian-controlled territory in Qalqilya,
in the West Bank, northeast of Tel Aviv.
Palestinian and other Arab leaders increasingly
blamed the United States for the Palestinians' predicament, after President
Bush gave his qualified blessing on Saturday for the Israeli assault and
American diplomacy remained largely silent for another day.
In his Easter message, Pope John Paul II appealed
for an end to "the dramatic spiral of the imposition of will by force and
killings that bloody the Holy Land.
"It seems that war has been declared on peace,"
the pope said.
Israeli troops fired again toward Mr. Arafat's office
on Sunday. The army said soldiers opened fire after an armed man stepped
outside, but Palestinians inside the compound disputed the assertion, saying
that Mr. Arafat's guards repelled an attempt by soldiers to storm the office.
The Israeli government continued to say that its
soldiers were taking precautions not to harm Mr. Arafat himself. But Brig.
Gen. Ron Kitri, the army's top spokesman, said, "It must be remembered
that Arafat is not sitting in a monastery. He is surrounded by armed Palestinian
fighters."
Waving white cloths, a group of about 40 foreign
members of a pro-Palestinian group walked through the Israeli lines on
Sunday to join Mr. Arafat in his office. Most of them stayed inside, apparently
intending to serve as a human shield, which caused consternation at the
top levels of the Israeli government.
The streets of Ramallah were empty once again on
Sunday, but so were the streets and sidewalks of Jerusalem, on the first
day of the Israeli work week. People rushed to and from work without lingering
on street corners or in cafes, where a terrorist might strike. The skies
were dark and full of dust thrown up by a fierce, cold wind.
In his remarks on Sunday night, an address to his
nation that lasted less than four minutes, Mr. Sharon was clearly seeking
to line himself up with the United States in a global fight against terrorism
that, for him, is centered on Ramallah. He said Mr. Arafat was "at the
head of a coalition of terrorism" and "operating a strategy of terrorism."
He called the Palestinian leader "an obstacle to peace in the Middle East"
and "a danger to the whole region."
With rising alarm, Arab leaders in recent days have
called the Israeli assault on Mr. Arafat's compound a threat to regional
stability.
Palestinian officials called Mr. Sharon's statement
a declaration of war. Nabil Aburdeineh, a close aide to Mr. Arafat who
has stayed at his side in Ramallah, said Mr. Sharon was trying "to boost
the collapsed morale of his people.
"The Israelis should understand that the Palestinian
people will be steadfast and will not surrender, and that they are confident
that victory is coming," he said.
The blast in Haifa on Sunday blew the roof off the
restaurant, which was operated by a family of Israeli Arabs. Several Israeli
Arabs were among the dead, the police said, though officials were still
trying to identify some remains late Sunday night. Haifa is one of the
few areas where Israeli Jews and Arabs live in relative harmony, and some
survivors said they had believed that they were safe because no bomber
would risk killing Arabs. The Islamic group Hamas took responsibility for
the attack, calling the victims "the thieves of our homeland" and the act
a retaliation for Israeli invasions of Ramallah, Bethlehem and other towns.
The bomber was identified as a 23-year-old Palestinian
from the refugee camp in the nearby city of Jenin.
Less than two hours later, another suicide bomber
struck, the fifth in five days. He killed himself and wounded at least
four others in the settlement of Efrat, in the West Bank south of Bethlehem.
At least 44 Israeli civilians have died in Palestinian
attacks since Wednesday night, when a suicide bomber killed himself and
22 other people who were gathered for a Passover Seder in Netanya.
Marwan Barghouti, the West Bank leader of Yasir
Arafat's Fatah faction, said the recent attacks demonstrated that, "If
your tanks are able to impose siege on President Yasir Arafat, our heroes
succeeded in storming the Israeli cities."
Mr. Barghouti has said previously that he believes
that Palestinian militants should confine their attacks to the West Bank
and Gaza Strip, the lands that Israel occupied in the 1967 war and that
he sees as the future home of a Palestinian state. But in his comments
on Sunday, on Palestinian television, he warned: "Our heroes will penetrate
your streets, your cities. You will not enjoy security and peace unless
our people enjoy peace and freedom."
Implicating the United States in the captivity of
Mr. Arafat, he said: "This aggression is by an American decision, and American
weapons. America now is the one providing cover for terrorism and supporting
terrorism."
Mr. Arafat said that he spoke by telephone with
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and told him, "We need the urgent sending
of international forces to stop this aggression and military escalation."
Mr. Bush, speaking from his Texas ranch, said on
Saturday that Mr. Arafat should be doing more to stop violence and that
he understood "Israel's need to defend herself."
For a third day, Israeli troops conducted house-to-house
searches in Ramallah, rounding up Palestinian teenagers and men in what
the army called a hunt for terrorists.
Nidal Abdallah, an 11th-grade student from Al Bireh,
which adjoins Ramallah, said he was held overnight by Israeli soldiers
after complying when troops broadcast a summons on Wednesday for boys and
men between the ages of 15 and 45 to assemble at a school. He said that
he sat up all night in a lighted classroom with other men and that he was
never questioned.
"Sometimes they'd call people out and take them
outside and hit them a little if you threw a smart remark," said Nidal,
an American who divides his time, with his family, between Ramallah and
Cicero, Ill. "They would smack him around, not too hard, slap him on the
face. In the morning they let us out."
The matter of the pro-Palestinian group that joined
Mr. Arafat in his office came up in a lengthy meeting on Sunday afternoon
of Israel's senior leadership. Mr. Sharon promised that no such group would
be permitted to pass again, one Israeli official said. The army said it
had arrested 13 members of the group who left the compound, accusing them
of defying its closure of Ramallah.
The Israeli government also increased its pressure
on foreign journalists to leave Ramallah. Government officials threatened
to remove reporters found there and to strip them of their press credentials.
In Jerusalem, they threatened to fine any news organization $15,000 if
it was found harboring Palestinians "without the proper permits" in one
building housing news bureaus.
Many news organizations here employ Palestinian
journalists.
In his speech on Sunday night, Mr. Sharon promised
to strike "the terror infrastructure" at its foundations because that was
the only way to achieve a cease-fire and then, ultimately, peace.
To many Israelis and Palestinians, Mr. Sharon's
language and orders increasingly bring to mind Israel's invasion of Lebanon
20 years ago. "It was our business never to allow a terrorist infrastructure
that would threaten Israel's security to be built in Lebanon again," Mr.
Sharon wrote of that operation, in his autobiography, "Warrior."
In 1982, Israeli forces led by Mr. Sharon, then
the defense minister, pushed into Lebanon in what was presented as "Operation
Peace for Galilee," a brief raid to clear away the northern border.
But the tanks and troops kept moving until they
were besieging the capital, Beirut, itself. In "Warrior," Mr. Sharon recalled
feeling frustrated by American efforts to bring about a cease-fire. He
argued that the Palestine Liberation Organization had built an "actual
state" in Lebanon that amounted to "a kingdom of terror."
Mr. Sharon succeeded in expelling Mr. Arafat from
Beirut, and he then met with about 30 Palestinian leaders in the West Bank,
he recalled, in hopes of opening "a new era" in relations.
Palestinian officials say Mr. Sharon is pursuing
the same strategy now, hoping to expel or kill Mr. Arafat and then raise
up a new, more tractable Palestinian leadership.
"For me it is not the first time," Mr. Arafat told
CNN on Sunday, referring to his survival of the siege in Beirut, which
he recalls as a triumph over Mr. Sharon. "He has to remember what happened
in 88 days in Beirut."
The prime minister argued in a cabinet meeting Friday
for Mr. Arafat's expulsion, top Israeli officials said, but was opposed
by leaders of the moderate Labor Party and by his own security chiefs.
The security officials said Mr. Arafat would be more dangerous abroad than
under Israeli lock and key in Ramallah.
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
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