BETHLEHEM, 9 April — United States envoy Gen. Anthony Zinni met defiant Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to deliver what the White House said was an uncompromising message from President George W. Bush to end an Israeli offensive in Palestinian areas as Israeli troops pressed on with killings and US Secretary of State Colin Powell got a first-hand taste of Arab anger over the plight of the Palestinians during his visit to Morocco.
Israeli helicopters, tanks and bulldozers wreaked new destruction yesterday in the towns of Nablus and a senior Palestinian minister predicted that Israel will launch a “total” invasion in the Gaza Strip within 48 hours unless Washington intervenes more forcefully in the conflict.
“A total Israeli invasion in the Gaza Strip is expected in 48 hours if the United States does not really mobilize to stop this Israeli aggression,” Palestinian International Cooperation Minister Nabil Shaath said in Cairo.
Late yesterday, the Israeli Defense Ministry confirmed public radio reports of an imminent troop withdrawal from the northern West Bank cities of Qalqylia and Tulkaram.
Powell said Israel should quit the West Bank “now,” warning its massive military operation to crush Palestinian activists was creating “significant and severe” problems.
“The strategic problems created by this operation are significant and severe,” Powell told reporters after meeting King Mohammed VI of Morocco on the first leg of a tour that is to finish in Israel at the end of this week.
Bush again stressed yesterday that Israeli forces should withdraw from Palestinian cities they have occupied “without delay.”
“I meant what I said to the prime minister of Israel,” said Bush, on a visit to Tennessee. “I expect there to be a withdrawal without delay.” “I also meant what I said to the Arab world (that) in order for there to be peace, the leaders must stand up to terrorism,” Bush said. Bush delivered the stern message as Israeli troops massed around another West Bank city, Hebron, ready for a possible assault.
Five ambulances were fired on by Israeli troops, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and reporters saw Israeli helicopters pounding the Jenin camp, where 15,000 people live. There were also reports of new atrocities. Outraged Palestinians said that women and the elderly were being used by the Israelis as human shields for the advancing tanks.
The ICRC said ambulances were allowed to pick up only three wounded people from Jenin in the entire day. As Israeli tanks and bulldozers mowed down poorly built refugee homes, helicopters strafed buildings, prompting further warnings of a humanitarian crisis.
Israeli forces fired shots at the Church of the Nativity yesterday during fighting with Palestinian gunmen in Bethlehem, and a fire briefly broke out in the church compound. One Palestinian policeman was killed during the shooting, Bethlehem Governor Mohammed Al-Madani told Reuters by telephone from inside the church. The blaze in the offices of a monastery inside the church compound was quickly put out.
In the West Bank city of Ramallah, Israeli forces shot dead three Palestinians, including a man accompanying his wife after she had given birth, Palestinian witnesses and medical officials said.
Fighting continued in Nablus, the largest Palestinian-ruled city in the West Bank, where cars crushed by tanks littered the streets and the stench of tear gas hung in the air.
Two Israeli soldiers were killed in fighting in the Jenin refugee camp and two Palestinian policemen were found dead inside a building after an Israeli-imposed curfew was lifted in Ramallah.
Israel’s feared “second front” grew hotter yesterday as Hezbollah fighters launched rockets on a disputed border area and the Jewish state fired back with F-16s and a rain of artillery shells.
The Hezbollah launched a dozen Russian-made Katyusha rockets and mortar bombs on two Israeli Army positions in the Shebaa Farms area, across from a UN-patrolled buffer border from southern Lebanon, police here said.
An Israeli Merkava tank was also hit with a Sagger wire-guided missile.
In Vatican City, Pope John Paul said violence in the Holy Land had escalated to “unimaginable and intolerable levels”.
In another development, Arafat and Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard, discussed the situation in the Middle East, the SPA news agency said. Arafat spoke by phone to Abdullah, who is in Morocco.
Arafat and Prince Abdullah discussed “developments in the Palestinian territories and the sufferings of the Palestinian people from a vicious Israeli aggression and its impact on the security and stability of the region,” the Saudi Press Agency said.
Abdullah reiterated the solid backing of the “Saudi people and government for the Palestinian people in their ordeal until they achieve victory,” SPA added.
Arab leaders, meanwhile, spurned Sharon’s offer to meet with moderate Arab leaders for immediate peace talks. Lebanese President Emile Lahoud described Sharon’s offer as a “vicious maneuver that aims to deceive the international community on the eve Powell’s tour in the region.” Nabil Shaath, the Palestinian planning minister, said in Cairo that Sharon had “destroyed all the hopes, and the hopes of those who believed that calm diplomacy by itself” could be an instrument of policy with Israel. Amr Moussa, the Arab League secretary-general, said Sharon’s comments serve the interests of Israel’s extremists.
Egypt’s Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher said: “He is an aggressive man and continues his aggressive policies.” Jordanian Prime Minister Ali Abu Ragheb said the Arabs had delivered a message of peace to the world at last month’s summit in Beirut, “but the Israeli government doesn’t have a peace vision, or a peace plan, or any concept it can put forth to the world.”
Sharon had earlier offered to hold immediate peace talks with moderate Arab leaders “anywhere, without any preconditions” along with pushing his aggression against the Palestinians.
Sharon made his offer during a speech before the Knesset, or Parliament, where he said a Saudi initiative to trade land for peace had a “positive component” but needed to be fleshed out in negotiations.
Sharon also kept up his campaign to isolate Arafat, saying peace depended on the emergence of a “responsible Palestinian leadership” after an eventual Israeli withdrawal. Sharon accused Arafat of having created a “regime of terror,” to use against Israel.
He called on the Palestinian people to “take your fate into your own hands ... You have to condemn terrorism.
In Amman, Jordan’s King Abdallah yesterday warned Israel that ties between the two countries will be “affected” if the Jewish state does not pull out its troops immediately from occupied Palestinian territories.
Britain warned Israel it was playing an “extremely dangerous game” by defying a US request to withdraw forces from Palestinian territory and strongly criticized the actions of Israeli troops.
Ben Bradshaw, a junior minister in the Foreign Office, said it was “totally unacceptable” that Israeli forces had shot at Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity, one of Christianity’s holiest sites. “It’s the latest in a long line of completely unacceptable actions by the Israeli Defense Force,” Bradshaw told BBC radio. British Prime Minister Tony Blair also called for rebuilding of “the political process” which he called “the only answer” to the bloody flare-up between Israel and the Palestinians on the West Bank.
In Brussels, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana warned yesterday that if Israel’s military operation in the West Bank continues at its current pace it could destroy the Palestinian Authority, making a cease-fire “very difficult, if not impossible.”
Meanwhile, Belgium yesterday imposed a ban on the sales of weapons, especially light ones, to Israel as the Jewish state used them to kill the Palestinians.
With its resolutions unfulfilled, the UN Security Council yesterday summoned the envoys from Israel and the Palestinian Authority for separate meetings to demand implementation of a cease-fire and for Israel to withdraw its troops.
