Jerusalem, Ramallah | Monday
ISRAELI Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said that Israel was at war and branded Yasser Arafat an “enemy of the free world” after a Palestinian suicide bomber killed 15 people in the city of Haifa.
Defence Minister Benyamin Ben Eliezer said on Monday that Israel had decided to “totally isolate” Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, besieged in his West Bank headquarters.
“I am waiting for the army to take measures to totally isolate Arafat, but we do not intend to humiliate him,” the minister told public radio.
Eliezer emphasised that Israel will continue to detain Palestinians “wanted for terrorism” and who he said have taken refuge in Arafat’s offices and in Palestinian security headquarters in Ramallah.
The minister spoke after a meeting of Israel’s security cabinet on Sunday evening, which decided to intensify Israeli operations.
Sharon’s tough speech, delivered on Sunday, was blasted by Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat, who said the hardline Israeli leader had “closed the door to peace” as the two sides exchanged new volleys of scorn and bitterness.
The Israeli army meanwhile did not rule out that Arafat, pinned down at his West Bank headquarters in Ramallah by a three-day Israeli army siege, might be killed “accidentally” as the Middle East slid closer to all-out chaos.
Speaking from inside his shattered compound, the Palestinian leader repeated he was ready to die and vowed never to surrender.
“The state of Israel is in a war,” Sharon said in a very brief address to the nation which put the blame fully on Arafat for the spiralling violence, which has included five suicide attacks since Wednesday.
“The terror is being directed and orchestrated by one person, Yasser Arafat,” Sharon told the Israeli nation. “He is the head of a coalition of terror and an enemy of Israel and an enemy of the free world.”
Erakat hit back within minutes of the evening address, saying that Sharon was choking off any hope of a long elusive peace.
“His speech proves to the whole world that he is the number one enemy of peace. He will press on with his military plan to destroy the Palestinian Authority and kill President Arafat,” Erakat said.
“We call on the international community to stop the Israeli terrorism, since the occupation is terrorism,” he said.
The tit-for-tat accusations followed a suicide bombing in the Israeli port city of Haifa, when a man walked into a packed restaurant and blew himself up. Officials said 15 others were killed and more than 30 were wounded.
Israel responded by closing off Ramallah and declaring the city a military area. Its forces have had Arafat pinned under siege since Friday. All journalists were ordered out immediately.
The blast ripped the roof off the eatery and reduced the inside to rubble. A caller to a Lebanese television station said the armed wing of militant group Hamas, the Ezzedine al-Qassem Brigades, was responsible.
Hamas had warned Israel on Friday that it would pay dearly for its occupation of Ramallah, launched after Sharon rejected an Arab peace proposal that would trade Arab recognition of the Jewish state for a return of occupied land.
Within hours, another suicide bomber struck in the Jewish settlement of Efrat near the West Bank city of Bethlehem. The 17-year-old bomber was killed and seven people were wounded in the attack claimed by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Arafat’s Fatah movement.
More than 35 Israelis have been killed and dozens wounded in suicide attacks in the past week, including a bombing on Wednesday that left 22 people dead as they celebrated the start of the Jewish holiday of Passover.
Palestinian officials earlier said they feared Arafat, a bitter foe of Sharon for more than two decades, would be killed after what they said was an Israeli surge into the building housing his inner offices.
“The situation is really grave and I’m afraid for Yasser Arafat’s life,” Erakat said on CNN. He said the siege would “only bring more Israelis dying.”
Israel denied trying to enter the building but an army representative said the military had been given clear orders to “neutralise” the Palestinian leader.
“We are aware of the fact that Yasser Arafat could be hit accidentally,” General Ron Kitrey said in a radio interview. “He who plays with fire can get burned.”
A US journalist working with the Boston Globe newspaper was reported shot and wounded by Israeli troops but no further details were immediately available.
Pope John Paul II said in his Easter Sunday address: “It seems that war has been declared on peace.” He called for an end to “the tragic sequence of attacks and killings that bloody the Holy Land.”
Shimon Peres, Israel’s dovish foreign minister who shared the Nobel peace prize with Arafat, told US television network CBS that the Jewish state would not harm the Palestinian leader.
“We are not going to hurt Chairman Arafat,” Peres said, adding that the siege of Ramallah and other Palestinian cities would not last more than a few weeks. “We are not going to dismantle the Palestinian Authority,” he said.
Arab leaders were meeting to discuss the crisis while Jordan called for international observers and said it would consider reviewing its relations with the Jewish state.
But Israel’s close ally and financial backer, the United States, also put the blame on Arafat for the violence that has left more than 1 650 dead since September 2000.
With the White House coming under increasing fire over its role, or lack thereof, in the Middle East, a representative for US President George Bush said his peace envoy Anthony Zinni would keep working towards a solution. – Sapa-AFP
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