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

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