OCCUPIED JERUSALEM/WASHINGTON, 1 March — A new surge of violence in the West Bank yesterday threatened a peace move by Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard. Israeli forces stormed into two Palestinian refugee camps, killing 12 people. The Israeli Army said one of its soldiers was also killed in heavy fighting at one of the camps, Balata, just outside Nablus.
The raids marked the fiercest assault on Palestinian refugee camps since September 2000 and drew a US warning. Washington urged Tel Aviv to exercise restraint.
Palestinians charged that the incursions, backed by tanks and helicopter gunships, were an attempt by Israel to wreck a land-for-peace proposal floated by the crown prince that has won US support and gained international momentum.
The United States sent two top diplomats to the Kingdom to discuss the details of the Saudi initiative, the State Department said. US Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs William Burns held talks with the crown prince, spokesman Richard Boucher said in Washington.
Palestinian fighters at Balata, the biggest camp in the West Bank, said they had pinned down 14 Israeli commandos at a United Nations school. “Getting in is one thing, getting out is another,” one fighter said. The Israeli Army said troops had seized the school as an observation post and vehemently denied they were under siege. More than 100 Palestinians were wounded in the fighting, which Nablus Gov. Mahmoud Al-Aloul called “the fiercest battle since the beginning of the intifada.” Two Israeli soldiers were also hurt. Witnesses said troops were taking over one building after another in Balata, in some cases even breaking down walls of adjoining apartments to move from one to the next. In response, Palestinians fired assault rifles and two mortar bombs from nearby Palestinian areas at the Jewish settlement of Gilo on the edge of Jerusalem.
Marwan Al-Barghouti, a leader of President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction, called for Palestinian retaliation and mass street protests in Palestinian areas today “against the Israeli massacres of our people”.
The raids on Balata and the camp in Jenin followed an attack at an Israeli checkpoint in the West Bank late on Wednesday by a Palestinian woman bomber who blew herself up, wounding three Israeli policemen.
Senior aides to Arafat accused Israel of trying to sabotage Crown Prince Abdullah’s proposal. The proposal gained added momentum Wednesday when the crown prince told European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana in Jeddah that he expected Arab leaders to adopt his ideas at a summit of the Arab League in Beirut in late March. Solana met Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo yesterday and then moved on to Jordan for talks with King Abdallah in a tour to drum up support for the Saudi plan.
Meanwhile, the White House blamed former President Bill Clinton’s last-ditch push for Middle East peace in late 2000 for the bloody unrest that has wracked the region since then, saying unmet expectations there “turned to violence.” “An attempt to push the parties beyond where they were willing to go,” spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters, “led to expectations that were raised to such a high level that it turned into violence” when those hopes were dashed.
