Israel Strikes Palestinian Sites
from the Washington Post:
JERUSALEM, Oct. 12 –– In a sudden escalation of the Middle East crisis, Israeli attack helicopters fired missiles at Palestinian targets in Gaza and the West Bank today after an enraged mob of Palestinians set upon at least two Israeli reserve soldiers and beat them to death. A third body, possibly also an Israeli soldier, was found charred beyond recognition.
The Israeli Cobra gunships struck Palestinian police and security stations, a radio broadcasting facility in the West Bank city of Ramallah and a Coast Guard station 150 yards from the Gaza City headquarters of Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader. Arafat, who was unhurt, was in his office awaiting a scheduled meeting with CIA Director George J. Tenet when the first missiles hit in Gaza--three or four deafening explosions that shook his beachfront compound in what appeared to be a direct, personal warning by the Israelis.
No Palestinians were reported killed in the Israeli strikes, but at least 43 were reported injured.
By day's end, Israelis and Palestinians seemed on the brink of something akin to a war, albeit a lopsided one--a cycle of fury, death and revenge that neither seemed fully able to control. The deepening crisis, coupled with what U.S. officials described as a terrorist attack on a U.S. Navy warship at port in the southern Yemeni city of Aden, had immediate regional and global repercussions.
President Clinton, who called on both sides to silence their guns, was on the telephone with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Arafat, seeking again to convene a summit and press for a return to peace negotiations. Here in the region, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan cut short a round of talks in Beirut, the Lebanese capital, and rushed back to Israel in hopes of brokering a cease-fire.
Reflecting alarm over the surge in violence, oil prices soared to near 10-year highs, and stock prices on Wall Street and other major world exchanges plummeted. The main index of the Tel Aviv stock exchange nose-dived by more than 7 percent, one of its worst one-day performances.
The events defied diplomatic efforts to end the two-week-old crisis, the worst sustained violence in the Middle East since the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Indeed, the action on the ground, and the emotions on the street, seemed to be moving at a tempo that could outstrip diplomacy.
Palestinian officials called the helicopter attacks a declaration of war. Some vowed to strike back. Others called for an urgent session of the U.N. Security Council and for international action along the lines of NATO's intervention in Serbia on behalf of Kosovo.
"It's a criminal action against our citizens here in Gaza, there in Ramallah, now in Jericho and Nablus, everywhere," said Arafat. He called on Palestinians to "continue the march to Jerusalem, the capital of the Palestinian state."
Israeli officials characterized the helicopter attacks as a measured response to what they termed a lynching of the two Jewish soldiers.
The soldiers, whom the Israeli army described as reservists in their thirties, were beaten by a frenzied throng who broke into the Ramallah police station where the soldiers were held and threw their bodies from a second-floor window. In a news conference at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv, Barak blamed Arafat for the intensified violence, accused him of having authorized terrorist attacks on Israelis and threatened to carry out further retaliatory strikes.
"An inflamed mob carried out a horrific, horrendous lynching of these soldiers and we are all shocked by the pictures," said Barak, dark circles around his eyes after two weeks of the worst sustained violence in the Middle East in years. "A country that wants to live cannot tolerate such acts and cannot just disregard them."
Col. Raanan Gissin, an Israeli Army spokesman, said, "The bottom line is: Don't mess with us."
Barak said that within three to five days he will form a "national emergency government," presumably to include Ariel Sharon, the inflammatory leader of the right-wing opposition Likud Party and a figure reviled by Palestinians and throughout the Arab world.
Israeli tanks, meanwhile, were deployed at the outskirts of major West Bank Palestinian cities--Ramallah, Tulkarm and Nablus. Israel, which maintains security control of about 80 percent of the West Bank, closed many major roads there. The Erez crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip, the lone entry and exit point for 1.1 million Palestinians who live in Gaza, has been closed by Israel to everyone except foreign journalists and dignitaries.
In another move that generated concern, Israeli sources reported today that Arafat had ordered the release from Palestinian jails of dozens of members of the underground wings of the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, and Islamic Jihad, militant Palestinian groups that have carried out suicide and bombing attacks on Israel in the past. Among those said to have been released was Mohammed Deif, a top Hamas leader accused of planning and commanding a number of exceptionally bloody bombings.
A Palestinian official said they escaped.
Israeli helicopter gunships were reported in action near several West Bank towns, firing their .50-caliber machine guns. In Ramallah, a normally bustling commercial city just north of Jerusalem, Palestinian snipers were said to be positioned on rooftops in the unlikely event of an Israeli ground attack.
Streets were deserted in Ramallah, Gaza City and other Palestinian towns. Stores were closed and few cars moved on the roads. The only bustle was around bakeries, where Palestinians were stocking up on bread in case grocery stores remained closed indefinitely.
In the Palestinian-controlled town of Jericho, Palestinians torched the Peace on Israel synagogue, a local tourist attraction dating from the 6th century and noted for the beauty of its Byzantine mosaic floor. Israeli television reported that Palestinians blocked firefighters from approaching the synagogue. In retaliation for the burning, Israeli helicopters fired four rockets at a Palestinian police officers' training academy in Jericho.
Israeli security officials expressed concern that more violence will erupt Friday--for a third straight week--following weekly prayers at al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem's Old City. As they did last week, Palestinians have proclaimed Friday a "day of rage" to protest Israel's tactics. Israeli police said they would respond harshly to any Palestinian violence at the mosque, as they have on the last two Fridays.
The mosque sits on an elevated, paved platform revered by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and by Jews as the Temple Mount. It was Sharon's visit to the sanctuary two weeks ago that provided the spark for the current crisis, which has left nearly 100 people dead, most of them Palestinians, and more than 3,000 injured.
Veteran Israeli peace activists advocated a tough response to the rioting in the West Bank and Gaza, which Palestinians have dubbed the "al-Aqsa intifada," or uprising. Indeed, it was difficult to distinguish between the pronouncements of Israeli hawks and doves, who for so long have stood on opposite sides of a bitter ideological and political divide in the Jewish state.
"We have to show the other side that we can hit back," said Tsali Reshev, a leader of the dovish group Peace Now who in the past has been openly sympathetic to Palestinian territorial and other claims. "And we're not pacifists who will just sit around and wait for [Palestinian] goodwill."
Barak, who has enraged Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza by making what they regard as dangerous territorial concessions to Arafat, tonight showered the settlers with praise.
A similar dynamic was at work on the Palestinian side, where moderates have gone underground and fiery rhetoric rules the streets.
"The worst has not happened yet," said Saeb Erekat, the Palestinians' scholarly chief negotiator. "Now this is an all-out war against the Palestinian people."
One relatively lonely voice calling for moderation was Tamar Gozansky, a Jewish member of the Knesset, Israel's parliament, who belongs to an Arab communist party called Hadash.
"If we've lowered ourselves to this primitive level of an eye for an eye, then we've come to the end of the road, a spiral of violence and blood," she told Israeli radio. "There's no way to end this crisis with violence and conflict and bombs, only with negotiations."
But cool heads are the rare exception here at the moment. Even before the events that unfolded this morning, the mounting Palestinian death toll had stoked emotions. Then, between 10 and 11 a.m., the two Israeli reservists, possibly accompanied by a third soldier, apparently got lost and blundered into Ramallah from the west, according to Israeli accounts. Palestinians said the soldiers were taken for undercover operatives sent on a spying mission, although they were at least partially in uniform.
The soldiers were taken to a Ramallah police station, then killed by a mob.
About three hours later, Israel struck back. Its missiles slammed into a half-dozen targets, including the police station in Ramallah where the killings took place. Other targets included the Voice of Palestine radio transmitting facility in Ramallah, apparently targeted because it has been airing calls to attack Israeli targets.
In addition, Israeli missiles struck a security office in Gaza shared by Palestinian police and a Palestinian militia group whose gunmen have been attacking Israeli positions. Two beachfront Palestinian Coast Guard stations in Gaza, one of them a short distance from Arafat's compound, were also hit.
Special correspondent Mike O'Connor in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.
Best Regards, J.T. |
