Siege of Palestinian cities deepens

JERUSALEM - Israeli troops remained in and around major Palestinian cities in the West Bank yesterday in the most comprehensive offensive on Palestinian-ruled areas in a year of fighting.

Soldiers battled Palestinian gunmen after eight Palestinian fighters and civilians were killed on Saturday and Israeli missiles battered a building in Bethlehem, wounding eight others.

Israeli officials stressed the Army's entry into five Palestinian-ruled cities and a town this week did not signal the imminent demise of the Palestinian Authority.

Palestinian officials accused Israel of wrecking attempts to find a way back to stalled peacemaking.

The United States has urged both sides to uphold a ceasefire and renew peace talks which it views as crucial to maintaining Arab support for its war on terrorism after the September 11 attacks in America.

"The Israeli Army has a plan to escalate militarily and it is pursuing this plan, in direct challenge to all international efforts to calm the situation and to revive the peace process," said Palestinian President Yasser Arafat after meeting Russian envoy Andrei Vdovin.

Vdovin warned that the recent violence marked "a military escalation and there are many dangers to the peace process ... We will exert maximum effort to stop the logic of the military and to stop the logic of terrorism".

Israel said the incursions aimed to apprehend Palestinian militants planning attacks on Israelis. But it pledged to withdraw troops wherever the authority acted to thwart such assaults.

"We have no interest in staying in [Palestinian-ruled] area A, we have no interest in returning there, we have no interest in destroying the Palestinian Authority," said Israeli Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer.

The raids followed the assassination of ultra-nationalist Israeli cabinet minister Rehavam Zeevi, the first-ever killing of an Israeli minister by Palestinians.

Ben-Eliezer said Israel would withdraw from the Palestinian areas once the Palestinians pledged to stop all shooting from those areas and prevent militants from carrying out attacks.

"This is the fruit of a certain reality in which Arafat is doing nothing, nothing to stop terrorism," Ben-Eliezer said. "When you live with ticking bombs ... you have no other choice."

Palestinian militants have waged a suicide bombing campaign against Israel since the start of an uprising against Israeli occupation a year ago.

Peres is due to visit Washington this week to discuss developments.

Washington has condemned Israeli raids into Palestinian areas, but stopped short of publicly calling on it to withdraw.

But violence on the ground lent substance to fears that Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed is spinning out of control as Israeli troops pushed several hundred metres into the West Bank cities of Tulkarm and Qalqilya yesterday.

The raids followed similar moves into Ramallah and Jenin and troops were seen strengthening their hold on Bethlehem, revered as the birthplace of Jesus, and nearby Beit Jala.

The death toll since Zeevi's assassination is 20 Palestinians and one Israeli.

Israel has demanded the authority hand over those involved in Zeevi's killing, outlaw groups it defines as "terrorist" and arrest militants on a most-wanted list.

A senior Palestinian security source said their forces had arrested some 20 Palestinian militants in the last few days.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's spokesman Avi Pazner said Israeli troops would stay "as long as necessary" in Palestinian cities to root out "terrorists".

"We are taking intensive measures against terrorism. We are actually doing the job that the Palestinian Authority is under binding obligation to do under the Oslo accords - a job that they are not doing," said Pazner.

At least 646 Palestinians and 177 Israelis have been killed in fighting that flared in September 2000 after peace talks stalled.

Military analysts warn the carnage will only continue.

"I don't see peace in the near future. Will we see more killings? Yes," said a grim Zeev Schiff, a military analyst for Haaretz newspaper.

Haidar Abdul Shafi, a political activist in Gaza City, predicted little progress on either side of the divide.

"Arafat continues to put his hope in the peace process that the Americans and Europeans will take a more balanced position toward the Palestinians. This is a dream," Shafi said.

"Sharon hopes he can drive the Palestinians to accept whatever he gives them."

He called for Palestinians to lobby the international community to exert pressure.

"I think if Israel is allowed free rein in the situation, they could wreak havoc with everything."

Over recent weeks Palestinians had felt a glimmer of hope as Washington and London issued strongly worded endorsements of a Palestinian state, crowned by Arafat's meeting last week with British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

But the gunmen from the radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) threw the region back into chaos with their mafia-style hit on Zeevi.

Sharon delivered a red-hot speech, drawing parallels between the Palestinian Authority and Afghanistan's ruling Taleban and Saudi-born Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind behind the September 11 attacks.

"We will wage a war without mercy against the terrorists," Sharon bellowed in Parliament.

While Arafat moved to condemn the killing of Zeevi and arrested at least a dozen members of the PFLP's political wing, Sharon demanded Arafat turn over the killers, or have the Palestinian territories blacklisted as a terrorist entity.

Independent Palestinian Parliament member Ziad Abu Amr said he foresaw "only more escalation".

"This is the main thing Sharon is looking for."

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