OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 18 April — American efforts to broker a new case-fire in the Middle East yesterday ended in humiliation for US Secretary of State Colin Powell who was forced to return home with neither a truce nor any evidence that Israel was ending its siege of Palestinian cities. All Powell could say was that he had been promised an Israeli pullout “within a week or so” by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
At the same time, Powell said he had told Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, whom he met earlier in the day for a second time in his tour, that he was dismayed with his performance on halting violence and the Palestinian Authority had to work to end “terrorism”. He told Arafat that he “can no longer equivocate” on fighting terrorism.
“We are disappointed with Chairman Arafat’s performance. We believe all along that he could have done more,” Powell told a news conference.
He later went to Cairo where Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak did not meet him as scheduled in an apparent snub. Secretary Powell then met with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher and Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Moasher. Egypt’s anger at US-Israeli stance was also made known with Cairo scaling back its ties with Tel Aviv further by announcing a halt to agricultural cooperation —- one of the few areas which had been virtually unshaken by years of regional turmoil.
Violence flared again across the West Bank, with at least three Palestinians killed by Israeli gunfire. Late in the evening Israeli tanks fired heavy machine guns inside Jenin’s refugee camp and the army warned residents combing the rubble that a curfew remained in force.
It was not clear why the tanks opened fire in the camp’s smashed streets. The army told residents through loud hailers that a curfew was still in force. In the afternoon, hundreds of Palestinians had poured back into the refugee quarter from the town, many of them residents who had fled the fierce Israeli onslaught.
Before the tanks began shooting, civilian medics had been using shards of metal as shovels to dig in the rubble that was once the camp’s main square, uncovering the limb of a corpse. Suddenly, heavy machine-gun fire sounded in repeated bursts in the main street next to the square. A crowd of Palestinians who had gathered to watch the gruesome excavation scrambled down the mountain of rubble, fleeing into alleys in all directions. The medics hurriedly covered up what they had found with boards and also fled.
Israeli authorities have been blocking rescue workers and earth-moving equipment from entering the devastated camp where people remained buried alive beneath collapsed buildings, a UN body said. Residents have reported hearing noises from people trapped beneath the rubble, but were unable to free them, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said in a statement.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said it needed international teams of specialist rescue workers to help in the clearing of the camp and save possible survivors. ICRC spokesman Vincent Lusser said ICRC had asked Israel to help facilitate the bringing in of international teams. But he said ICRC had so far not received a response.
United Nations rights chief Mary Robinson pressed Israel to let a UN mission visit the occupied territories and the Jewish state. Robinson was asked by the United Nations Human Rights Commission to lead the team of inquiry and report back before the end of its annual six-week session in Geneva on April 26.
But Israel said it would be difficult to organize such a trip at the same time as Powell was in the country.
Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said things were much worse than before Powell’s visit. “It is very unfortunate that every effort exerted by the secretary was torpedoed by Sharon,” he told reporters.
Sharon said Monday that the army would pull out of the battered cities of Jenin and Nablus within days, but would stay in Ramallah and Bethlehem. Tanks thrust into two more villages yesterday and a furious Arafat said after talks with Powell that troop pullbacks were a sham.
He told reporters Israel had announced troop withdrawals from two West Bank cities, only to return, and was also making “shameful attacks” on Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity.
“They have not withdrawn. As you remember, they had mentioned Tulkarm and Qalqilya but they came back,” he said. Israeli forces left the two cities last Tuesday, but staged an incursion in Tulkarm a week later. Tanks still ring Qalqilya.
