Israelis Broaden West Bank Raids as Arabs Protest
The New York Times, April 2, 2002
April 2, 2002
Israelis Broaden West Bank Raids as Arabs Protest
By JOHN KIFNER with JAMES BENNET
RAMALLAH, West Bank, Tuesday, April 2 — Israeli soldiers and tanks poured
into the West Bank on Monday as Palestinians continued attacks and as angry
demonstrations spread across the Arab world against Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon's all-out campaign against the Palestinians.
Early this morning, the Israeli Army attacked the
headquarters of Jibril Rajoub, the powerful Palestinian security chief
in the West Bank, who had been a crucial ally of the United States after
the 1993 Oslo peace talks, and jailed scores of Islamic militants. The
building was set on fire.
In the West Bank, the army moved in force on Monday
night into Bethlehem and into Tulkarm to the north with scores of tanks,
armored personnel carriers and armored bulldozers backed by infantry. Troops
in Qalqilya reinforced their positions and began house to house searches.
Armored vehicles had already been stationed in Beit Jala, the nearby, largely
Christian hilltop village within range of the Jewish district of Gilo.
But for all of Israel's military might, Palestinians
struck again Monday, as they have in the past few days in Netanya, Tel
Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem. A sniper, firing from Bethlehem, killed an Israeli
in Har Homa, a housing development built on land Israel conquered in 1967.
A bomber — the sixth in as many days — blew up his car near a junction
that divides East and West Jerusalem, killing the policeman who stopped
him for a check. During the day, at least 15 Israeli soldiers were wounded
in fighting.
In all, it was another tense, ugly day that left
diplomats in despair. There was no sign of Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, who had
been dispatched as the American intermediary.
As the mood hardened, 11 Arabs, most of them pulled
from jail cells and accused of "collaborating" with Israel, were brutally
killed by Palestinians in three separate incidents on the West Bank.
The Israeli Army said tonight that it had rounded
up more than 700 people in Ramallah since Friday. The streets here, where
Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, was besieged in two rooms of his
wrecked headquarters for a fourth day, are eerily empty. Iron gates shutter
every shop. Residents are running out of food and water. The hospital is
running out of supplies, too — of food, medicine, bandages, even disposable
gloves. Its morgue, with 25 bodies, is full, and the Israelis will not
let the bodies be buried.
At midafternoon, a fierce gun battle broke out near
Manara Square in the middle of Ramallah. The Israelis used tanks and an
antiaircraft gun trained like an artillery piece to pound a building where
Palestinian gunmen were holed up. The shelling and automatic weapons fire
went on for more than an hour. As night fell, there were the blasts of
artillery shells and the clanking of tracked armored vehicles in the streets.
Heavy machine gun fire was heard in the city at 4:30 this morning.
About 2 a.m., Israeli tanks and infantry, with helicopters
flying overhead, began their attack on Mr. Rajoub's palatial hilltop compound,
a state-of-the-art security complex widely believed to have been built
with financial help from the United States. The compound had been surrounded
by tanks for several days, and the Israeli Army had been putting out word
that about 50 wanted men were inside. There were said to be about 400 people
in the compound, although Mr. Rajoub himself was not there.
"They are shooting, shooting," said a deputy to
Mr. Rajoub, Abu Osama, in a brief, tense cellphone conversation from inside
the compound. "Tanks and snipers."
Mr. Rajoub, like his counterpart in the Gaza Strip,
Muhammad Dahlan, had been a crucial figure in the American-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian
security cooperation. On a shelf in his huge office, he kept a picture
of George J. Tenet, the Central Intelligence Agency director, and a piece
of Jerusalem stone, a gift from Avi Dichter, the head of Israel's secret
internal security service, Shin Bet.
During the night, a rocket was launched from Lebanon
over the border into northern Israel, the first since Israel withdrew in
the face of guerrilla attacks from Hezbollah in the spring of 2000. Hezbollah
has been increasingly vocal in support of the Palestinians lately, raising
Israeli fears of a two-front war.
As passions and bloodshed mounted, so did protests
against Israel — and America, seen as its backer — with tens of thousands
massing in Cairo and clashing with the police, and with similar scenes
at Jordan University in Jordan, which is usually tightly ordered.
Yasir Abed Rabbo, the Palestinian minister of information,
accused the United States of abetting the Israeli campaign. "The United
States is supporting the aggression against us, it is as simple as this,"
he said. "And they believe that they can neutralize the Arabs, the Europeans,
and give Sharon the upper hand, and then they can intervene to find a solution.
But this will widen the conflict more and more. There will be more bloodshed.
There will be no end to this conflict, no end."
He called it "the most short-sighted policy I have
ever seen."
A body of mediators from the United Nations, the
United States, the European Union and Russia was barred by Israel from
coming here to meet Mr. Arafat. Israel insisted that it wanted to keep
the Palestinian leader on the sidelines.
"Yasir Arafat is in isolation, and he is going to
remain so until the end of the terrorist threat," said Ranaan Gissin, an
adviser to Mr. Sharon.
Both sides regarded President Bush's remarks last
week, supporting Israel's right to seek security, as a virtual green light
for Mr. Sharon. Indeed, it appeared to embolden even the normally bellicose
Mr. Sharon, who called in a television address to the nation last night
for "an uncompromising war to uproot these savages."
On Monday, President Bush again criticized Mr. Arafat,
who he said had failed to denounce "constant attacks" of suicide bombers,
while he urged Mr. Sharon to keep "a pathway to peace open." Mr. Bush had
yet to speak directly with either Mr. Sharon or Mr. Arafat during the Israeli
military campaign.
Among Israel commentators and analysts, there was
a sense that, with the American go-ahead, the military attack should move
as intensely and as quickly as possible, before the winds changed. Zeev
Schiff, the military analyst for the Haaretz newspaper, warned of the "prospect
of negative diplomatic developments."
Israeli military commanders vowed that in their
campaign, called "Operation Protective Wall," all the West Bank cities
would be "taken care of," Israeli newspapers reported this morning.
The pattern would be the same as it has been here
in Ramallah, the unofficial Palestinian capital — a military takeover with
seizing of Palestinian offices; house to house searches; large numbers
of men rounded up for questioning; and a total curfew that emptied streets,
and closed shops and businesses.
But some analysts still questioned whether Mr. Sharon's
strategy would ultimately stop terror attacks. At least in the short run,
Israeli intelligence chiefs predicted, they would see more Palestinian
attacks as anger rose over the Israeli campaign.
This evening, a Palestinian bomber struck near the
Old City in Jerusalem, killing himself and a policeman. The man set off
a bomb after his silver sedan, with yellow Israeli license plates, was
pulled over at a checkpoint on a road dividing Jewish West Jerusalem from
Palestinian East Jerusalem.
The explosion blasted the roof off the car and catapulted
the bomber's torso onto the sidewalk, where it lay with one remaining arm
outstretched. As flames consumed the car, medics rushing to the scene loaded
the police officer on a stretcher and into an ambulance. He died of his
wounds in the hospital.
After arriving at the blast site, dozens of soldiers
sprinted into East Jerusalem, and they fired at least two shots. The Israeli
police said later that the officers were pursuing rock-throwers. The police
said they were investigating the incident and did not immediately classify
it as a suicide bombing.
On Monday, the police released statistics showing
that 79 Israelis have died in suicide bombings since Jan. 24, when the
first suicide bomber of the year exploded. Of those victims, at least 38
have died since Wednesday night, when a suicide bomber blew himself up
at a Passover Seder in the Israeli city of Netanya.
In the Palestinian areas, people were jamming grocery
stores and bakeries to store up food and supplies in anticipation of the
impending Israeli assault. "No one knows how long it will be," said Karim
al Bachi, a 40-year-old with six children, who was buying supplies of milk
at a store in the Gaza Strip. "Children cannot tolerate much."
But there was defiance, too. In Gaza, demonstrators
set fire to effigies of Mr. Bush, Mr. Sharon and a figure representing
Arab leaders, as well as a coffin labeled "Arab League."
Near the entrance to Bethlehem, just south of Jerusalem,
the Israelis by Monday afternoon had set up a field hospital on the grounds
of a monastery. More than 20 tanks and armored vehicles were parked and
waiting, as soldiers in battle gear prepared to enter Palestinian-controlled
territory.
Some of the soldiers were gray-haired men in wire-rimmed
glasses. One soldier who appeared to be in his 30's dandled his infant
son as he said farewell to his family. They were reservists, part of a
force of 20,000 called up for the new campaign.
Several said that doubts about duty in the West
Bank had been dispelled by Israel's recent losses in a string of suicide
attacks. "This is about going to work, about my wedding in two months,
about normal life," said Frankie Sachs, 26, from Jerusalem. "If this means
we'll be able to sit in a cafe and not worry, then it's worth the risk.
We can't live in fear forever."
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company