Israel cuts ties to Arafat, vows to fight 'terror'

JERUSALEM - Israel severed ties with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat on Thursday and struck Palestinian targets after militants killed 10 Israelis in violence that threatened to wreck a US envoy's peace mission.

Israeli forces advanced to within 100 metres of Arafat's headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah after Israel, which has long ruled out negotiations under fire, said the Palestinian leader was not a partner for peace.

"Arafat is no longer relevant as far as Israel is concerned and there will be no more contact with him," Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's security cabinet declared after an emergency meeting.

Israeli Justice Minister Meir Sheetrit said: "We have no intention of physically harming Arafat."

He said the security cabinet's decision meant there would be no more meetings with Palestinian officials and Israel would not rely on the Palestinian Authority to fight "terrorism".

Nabil Abu Rdainah, a senior adviser to Arafat, was quoted as saying Israel had effectively declared war on the Palestinian people.

"It is an official war launched by Sharon's Government on our people and it will lead the region into more escalation, instability and violence," Abu Rdainah said.

Israeli warplanes carried out more than a dozen strikes in the West Bank and Gaza after Palestinian militants ambushed a bus with a roadside bomb and grenades and machineguns near the Jewish settlement of Immanuel in the West Bank yesterday.

Ten Israelis and one of the attackers were killed. Many of the Israeli dead were settlers, whom militants consider legitimate targets as occupiers of Palestinian lands.

The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, an armed organisation linked to Arafat's Fatah group, claimed responsibility for the bus attack and said it was in revenge for recent deadly assaults by Israeli forces.

But the Islamic resistance group Hamas said one of its members was also among the gunmen.

In Gaza, two suicide bombers blew themselves up in a Jewish settlement, wounding three people.

Hamas claimed responsibility, saying it was in revenge for Israel's killing of four militants in a helicopter missile strike in southern Gaza on Wednesday.

The surge in violence dealt another blow to the two-week-old mission of US envoy Anthony Zinni to secure an end to nearly 15 months of Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed.

Since Zinni's arrival in the region, 44 Israelis and 21 Palestinians have been killed. US sources said the former Marine Corps general would not abandon his quest.

After the bus ambush, Arafat took the unprecedented step of ordering the closure of all offices and institutions of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the groups behind dozens of suicide attacks inside Israel.

But Israel said it blamed Arafat "for not reining in these terrorists" and the US repeated its calls for the Palestinian leader to do more to end the wave of militant attacks that have drawn swift Israeli retaliation.

Stating publicly what Israeli leaders have been saying privately for weeks, Sheetrit said: "We have proved that Arafat cannot be the partner to this process of peace.

"Arafat will no longer be the address for Israel to take care of the terror issue and from now on we will do whatever we can as a country to defend ourselves."

Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo said it was impossible to implement the Palestinian commitments "under the shadow of the comprehensive war".

- REUTERS

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