GAZA CITY, 31 July — Violence in the Middle East threatened to spiral out of control yesterday after six Palestinians were killed in a West Bank blast and Israeli combat helicopters pounded Palestinian police headquarters in Gaza City.
The upsurge in tensions came after a weekend of rioting in Jerusalem, where Israeli police and Palestinian protesters fought running battles on the Al-Haram Al-Sharif complex, one of the holiest sites in the Jewish and Islamic faiths. The unrest has left a US-sponsored cease-fire in tatters, with the death toll since it was declared June 13 rising to 61 — 44 Palestinians and 17 Israelis.
At least four Palestinian policemen were injured when Israeli helicopter gunships fired five missiles at the walled compound which Israeli Army said was being used to make arms and mortar shells. The blast smashed walls and blew out windows of the compound, known as “Arafat City,” after the Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, who was in Tunisia to push for an Arab conference to tackle the 10 months of violence.
“This is another Israeli crime,” Arafat’s top aide Nabil Abu Rudeina told AFP. “It will only escalate the situation. We ask the international community, namely the United States, to move swiftly to stop the Israeli aggression and its war against the Palestinians and to provide international protection.”
The death toll rose sharply in the early hours yesterday morning when an explosion in a car junk yard in the West Bank village of Farah killed six Palestinian men, at least three of them militiamen from Arafat’s Fatah movement. Fatah officials vowed to exact “rapid and painful revenge.” “Our response will be more painful than can be imagined and it will be quicker than the (Israeli) occupation expects,” it said.
The Palestinians said the men were killed by Israeli tank shells fired from a Jewish settlement northeast of Nablus. Around 10,000 Palestinians, shouting “revenge, revenge” and waving flags, swarmed into Farah from the neighboring towns of Nablus and Jenin for the funerals, which passed off without incident despite flaring tempers.
The latest escalation in violence came after a tiny group of Jewish ultra-nationalists held a brief but symbolic ceremony Sunday near the Haram Al-Sharif in Jerusalem’s Old City to mark the laying of a cornerstone for a new temple on the site. The Jewish action sparked clashes which left at least 18 Palestinians injured and caused fury in the Arab world.
The Palestinian Authority rejected earlier an idea to have a US-only monitoring force oversee a cease-fire and insisted on a fully international team. Ahmad Abdel-Rahman, an aide to Arafat, said the PA would welcome US participation “within the observation force” but would not compromise on having people from other countries included. “We need Americans and others, not only Americans. It is very clear, Americans alone are not enough,” he told Reuters. Israeli political sources said last week Israel could agree to the deployment of as many as 10 US Central Intelligence Agency officers to monitor a cease-fire hammered out by the agency’s director, George Tenet, in June. Israel has refused any international presence other than a US one in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, maintaining it would serve as a shield to Palestinian attacks on Israelis.
