BEIT JALA, West Bank, 29 August — Israeli tanks and troops seized part of a Palestinian-ruled West Bank town yesterday as thousands of mourners screamed for revenge a day after Israel assassinated a top Palestinian leader.
Israeli radio reported that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer decided to keep troops in Beit Jala until further notice.
In the evening, Israeli tanks roared into the Palestinian refugee camp of Aida in Bethlehem, witnesses said.
A Palestinian officer was killed and seven people were wounded in fighting as Israeli troops thrust into Beit Jala and occupied the area. Israel called it a “limited” operation but it was not clear how long the troops would stay. Palestinians said the army’s reoccupation of Palestinian areas risked sparking regional war.
The United States, Israel’s staunchest ally, called for an immediate withdrawal from Beit Jala, saying it would only make matters worse.
“The Israelis need to understand that incursions like this will not solve the security problems,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.
The chief of Palestinian military intelligence, Gen. Musa Arafat, said he believed that Israel might try to kill Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Gen. Arafat warned that such an action against the Palestinian leader would lead to devastation throughout the region because Arafat was also an Islamic and an Arab leader.
Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres was quoted as saying yesterday by Russia’s Interfax news agency that he was willing to meet Arafat “anytime, anywhere”, but talks should be part of a process, not a single isolated meeting.
Meanwhile, a coalition of Palestinian groups based in Damascus, including the political wings of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements, promised revenge for Israel’s assassination of the PFLP chief. “We affirm that the blood of Abu Ali Mustafa, and all the fallen martyrs will be avenged,” the groups said in a statement. “We know when and how to force the enemy to pay the price for its crimes,” the movements said, adding “the Nazi Zionist enemy does not understand anything but the language of force and armed struggle.”
Some 20,000 mourners vowed revenge as they marched through the streets of Ramallah accompanying the pickup truck bearing Mustafa’s coffin, which was draped in a Palestinian flag.
Masked gunmen fired in the air as people chanted: “Our retaliation is on its way. Expect suicide bombings and more bullets.”
Palestinian minister Yasser Abed Rabbo charged Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon with gradually escalating the violence.
“This is the phase of reoccupation, therefore on the ground he has practically paved the way for war. We have every right in the world to resist occupation,” Abed Rabbo told Reuters.
The mayor of Beit Jala said Israeli forces had taken over about 10 percent of the town, handed over to Palestinian rule in 1995. Soldiers called over loudspeakers that the area was under curfew and showed no signs of pulling out anytime soon.
Palestinian gunmen exchanged sporadic fire with Israeli troops in largely deserted streets. A mortar shell was fired on a school in east Jerusalem last night, causing damage but no casualties.
Israeli soldiers slept on the floor of a girls’ school they had occupied. Others watched television in the living room of a Palestinian house they had seized and barricaded with sandbags.
Some 50 Palestinian children were trapped in an orphanage run by Evangelical Lutherans where Israeli soldiers had taken up position.
A Palestinian teenager was left clinically dead yesterday after being shot by Israeli troops near Rafah in the Gaza Strip, hospital sources said.
Tanks also briefly entered the Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip overnight. Twelve people were wounded and 15 buildings were wrecked before the army pulled out.
In the funeral procession, Mustafa’s wife and children sobbed over his coffin. “Let me hold him, let me hold him,” his wife Khitam wailed.
Another 7,000 Palestinians marched in Gaza, mourning the murder of Mustafa.
Meanwhile, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) condemned the assassination of Mustafa as a “new savage crime.” The murder was “an act of escalation...which puts an end to all efforts to save the peace process,” the 56-member body said in a statement from its headquarters in Jeddah.
The OIC urged the international community to intervene “rapidly to ensure the protection of the Palestinian people and bring the Israeli government to implement UN resolutions.”
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak told Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres in a telephone call yesterday that Israel should resume peace talks with the Palestinians without waiting for an end to violence. Mubarak discussed Israel’s policy of assassinating Palestinian personalities and “stressed he was not pleased with Israel’s current policies....”
In Syria, Palestinian refugee camps observed a two-hour strike yesterday morning in honor of Mustafa, the official SANA news agency reported.
In Lebanon, a member of the PFLP’s central committee sounded a call for revenge. “Our riposte will be hard and strike American and Israeli interests, wherever they are found,” said Abu Ali Tallal, who resides in the Ain Helweh refugee camp. “We no longer have any choice but to turn ourselves into human bombs and pursue the Israeli enemy everywhere inside (Israel) and abroad.”
