Israeli tanks surrounded and attacked Yasser Arafat’s Ramallah headquarters early on Thursday after a radical Islamic group killed at least 17 people in a bus bombing in northern Israel.
The new siege of the offices came as the United States increased its criticism of Arafat’s failure to curb anti-Israeli attacks, with hints that Washington is losing patience with the Palestinian leader.
One of Arafat’s bodyguards was killed and six injured in the heavy fighting that erupted on Arafat’s doorstep, although Arafat was said to be unhurt and Israeli forces had not entered the office building itself.
Palestinian hospital officials said Israeli forces had refused to allow ambulances through to evacuate the wounded. The tanks opened fire with shells and heavy machineguns on Arafat’s offices, which took a battering when Israeli forces besieged him in a five-week stand-off which started after a similar bomb attack late March.
Israeli public radio quoted an official as saying the operation was not targeting Arafat himself, nor aiming to impose a new siege on him.
Palestinian security officials said around 50 tanks penetrated Ramallah from the north and made a bee-line for the headquarters, triggering intense gunfights with presidential guards armed with light weapons.
A witness in the building told AFP the Israeli tanks had fired around 30 shells at Arafat’s headquarters, destroying the third floor of one of the buildings in the complex.
A wing of the headquarters housing the room usually hosting Arafat’s news conferences was also badly damaged, the witness said. Israeli radio said the army dynamited one building in the compound.
The army said in a statement its forces had taken positions around the headquarters building ”because it is the nerve centre of the Palestinian Authority which is directly responsible for the terrorism, which it orders.”
It said its forces had responded to fire and offered to evacuate the wounded if they submitted to identity checks, which it said the Palestinians refused.
Israeli troops at a checkpoint near Ramallah said the city was closed off until Sunday.
The attack appeared more ferocious than the fighting that erupted after Israel’s March 29 invasion, when Arafat was pinned down until May 2.
Security officials said the tanks were accompanied by six giant bulldozers which had started levelling some buildings in the compound area.
The attack occurred hours after a suicide bomber from the radical group Islamic Jihad blew up a bus in northern Israel, killing 17 Israelis, 13 of them soldiers, the army said. Earlier reports had put the toll at 16.
A car laden with explosives pulled up to the morning rush-hour bus and detonated, ripping the two vehicles apart in a ball of flame near Megiddo Junction in northern Israel, called Armageddon in the Bible.
Thirty-seven people were reported wounded, eight seriously.
The deadliest bombing in at least a month prompted fears of a new resurgence in Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed, just as US CIA chief George Tenet tried to kickstart efforts to beef up security structures.
Tenet met with Arafat on Tuesday, just hours before the bomb blast at Megiddo junction, and told him that Sharon would have a ”free hand” to retaliate if the bombings continued, a senior Palestinian official said.
A senior Israeli official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said Israel was waiting for ”tacit approval” from Washington to marginalise Arafat.
He said the US administration was ”wavering” in its conviction that there is no alternative to Arafat, and that Sharon would press the point when he meets Bush in Washington.
That hesitation was apparent when Ari Fleischer, a representative for President George W. Bush, said Washington would keep working with Arafat, but ”in the president’s eyes, Chairman Arafat has never played the role of someone who can be trusted or who is effective.”
A senior administration official, meanwhile, confirmed on condition of anonymity that the United States, dissatisfied with Arafat’s leadership, was reaching out to other Palestinian leaders.
That was reflected in the way Fleischer demanded that the Palestinian Authority take steps to thwart future attacks. ”The president is interested in results, from whatever corner they may come from. If that’s Chairman Arafat, that’s fine with the president; if it’s others, that’s fine with the president,” he said.
Sharon, who has made no secret of wishing to marginalise Arafat, nor even of his regret at not having killed him when he invaded Beirut in 1982 to flush out the Palestine Liberation Organisation, is due to fly to Washington on Saturday and meet Bush on Monday morning.
Washington urged Israeli restraint during its five week West Bank campaign, Operation Defensive Wall, which began after a Palestinian suicide bomber from the Islamic group Hamas killed 29 Israelis.
But the Palestinian official said Tenet warned there would be no such intervention if there were more bloody suicide attacks.
Hours after the blast some 30 Israeli tanks backed by Apache helicopters had streamed into the group’s stronghold of Jenin, 15 kilometres from Megiddo Junction, firing as they advanced.
The refugee camp in Jenin was the scene of fierce fighting in April during Israel’s month-long West Bank offensive. But there was no indication whether Wednesday’s operation was a short-term raid or heralded a new major push.
Also on the ground, a unit of the Israeli army entered the Palestinian town of Bethlehem late Wednesday and began to search a mosque, witnesses said. The soldiers did not meet any resistance. – Sapa-AFP