GAZA CITY, 12 December — Israel continued its policy of repression against Palestinians as its helicopters destroyed a base of President Yasser Arafat’s elite Force-17 guard in the Gaza Strip yesterday while troops in the West Bank shot dead two Palestinians at a checkpoint.
Palestinian officials said the building between the towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia, on the northern edge of Gaza City, was destroyed but there were no casualties as it had been evacuated several weeks ago after a similar attack.
The Israel Army said a car accelerated toward soldiers at a roadblock near the West Bank city of Tulkarm when they signaled it to stop. Troops opened fire and two men inside were shot, a statement said. A passenger in the car said troops opened fire after the vehicle had slowed to pass the barrier. He said the three men inside were laborers.
The deaths were reported shortly before European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana held separate talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and US envoy Anthony Zinni in Jerusalem. He also met Arafat in the West Bank city of Ramallah later. Solana urged Arafat to crack down on militants responsible for attacks inside Israel during a 14-month-old uprising against occupation, backing a US call to end violence which erupted shortly after peace talks stalled last year.
Before dawn, Israeli helicopter gunships fired at least five missiles into a building used by Arafat’s elite Force 17 security unit in the town of Beit Hanoun north of Gaza City. One of the rockets smashed into one of four prison cells inside the building, piercing the ceiling and the metallic door leading to cell number four before digging a small crater in the ground, an AFP correspondent said.
An officer speaking on condition of anonymity told reporters that nine of 36 activists on an Israeli “most wanted” list of activists were due to have been jailed there but detained elsewhere at the last minute.
“The Israelis are not interested in making Zinni’s mission succeed or making any efforts by international parties succeed,” Maj. Gen. Abdel-Razek Al-Majaydeh, the Palestinian public security chief, told Reuters after the attack in Gaza.
In a separate incident, three Palestinians were shot and wounded, one of them seriously, by Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint near Nablus as they tried to walk around one of scores of checkpoints that allow Israel to keep Palestinian towns and cities under strict control.
An aide to Arafat, Nabil Abu Rudeina, condemned the continued raids on Gaza.
“It is a dangerous escalation which undermines all the efforts of America and the international community to bring a cease-fire and restart the peace process,” he said. The raids were also “proof that Israel wants to sabotage the mission of Zinni,” he charged.
Israeli tanks and a military bulldozer made an incursion yesterday into autonomous Palestinian land near the southern Gaza Strip town of Qarara, Palestinian security source said. The tanks moved about 300 meters into an area east of a main road north of the flash point city of Khan Younis, near the Jewish settlement of Gush Katif, and the bulldozer was ripping up farmland, the sources said.
