OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 22 April — Israel kept up sieges of Yasser Arafat’s headquarters and the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem even as tanks withdrew from West Bank cities of Nablus and much of Ramallah. "We have finished this stage of the operation called Defensive Shield," Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told reporters in Jerusalem.
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat slammed Israeli pullbacks as a "big deception", saying Israel still had security control of all Palestinian-ruled parts of the West Bank.
Dazed Palestinians now free of Israeli curfew emerged from their homes to piles of garbage, smashed shops and streets chewed up by tank tracks.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell said he would ultimately like to see Israeli units that have been redeployed around Palestinian cities back in their garrisons. "And I would like to see the cities opened up, so that we can start to see normal life resume and so that there are no restrictions with respect to the provision of humanitarian aid," Powell added on CBS television’s "Face the Nation." Powell also repeated his call for Arafat to lead his people to a negotiated settlement.
The offensive caused hundreds of casualties, wiped out Arafat’s security services and wrecked many of the nascent institutions of his Palestinian Authority. Sharon said the campaign achieved significant results, pledging that Israel’s "struggle against terrorism" would go on. "However this time, it will work according to a different method," he said. Sharon was apparently referring to buffer zones which he wants to establish inside the West Bank to prevent Palestinians from reaching Israel.
In Bethlehem, troops remained locked in a stalemate with Palestinian fighters trapped with more than 200 policemen, clerics and civilians inside the Church of the Nativity.
With tanks still encircling Arafat in his battered headquarters in once-thriving Ramallah, and nearby residential streets blocked off by Israeli barriers of earth and wrecked cars, people in the city had little to smile about. "They left from the door and they will come back through the window," 85-year-old shopkeeper Hassan Abu Darwish said.
The scale of devastation, especially in the Jenin refugee camp, has provoked ferocious criticism from abroad and an exchange of accusations between Israel and the Palestinians. Israel’s Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein said the government had legal grounds for declaring the UN special coordinator for the Palestinian territories, Terje Roed-Larsen, persona non grata for comments he made to the press about the Jenin campaign. Roed-Larsen, visiting the refugee camp on Thursday, called the scenes of devastation "horrifying beyond belief" as survivors picked through the rubble in search of missing relatives or lost possessions. He said Israel’s action of blocking aid to the people trapped under the debris was "morally repugnant".
Secretary-General Kofi Annan expressed "full confidence" in Roed-Larsen, saying he had conducted himself with professionalism and compassion. Annan said: "I am disturbed by the recent public criticism of my special coordinator, Terje Roed-Larsen, by representatives of the government of Israel." "Mr. Roed-Larsen, in his many years of working to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has always conducted himself with objectivity, professionalism and compassion, " he said in a statement.
The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said that 800 dwellings had been destroyed and many more damaged in the Jenin camp, making 4,000 to 5,000 people homeless. "Certainly there is evidence of overwhelming and apparently disproportionate use of force, even if a battle was going on in Jenin camp," UNRWA Commissioner-General Peter Hansen said.
Muhammad Abu Ghali, director of Jenin hospital, said the body count from the camp had risen to 45. He stood by his earlier estimate that the final toll might be 300 to 400.
Four Palestinian children were wounded, including a three-year-old shot in the head, when Israeli troops fired on them as they threw stones at Israeli bulldozers in the Gaza Strip yesterday, Palestinian witnesses and medics said. The children were throwing stones at tanks and bulldozers trying to clear an area between the autonomous southern town of Rafah and the neighboring refugee camp, both close to the border with Egypt. The soldiers opened fire with live bullets, witnesses said, hitting three-year-old Ahmad Zaanoun in the head. His condition was critical, medics said.
On Saturday, the army wounded 20 Palestinians near Rafah and Khan Yunis, during a similar operation to clear an area of land, hospital sources said.
The Israeli Army arrested a military official of Fatah in the Qalandia refugee camp in the West Bank, Palestinian and Israeli military sources said. Palestinian witnesses said Nasser Humeid was among around 15 people arrested in the camp. Humeid, 34, is a close aide to Marwan Barghouti, Fatah’s West Bank chief whom Israeli forces arrested in Ramallah on April 15, according to an Israeli military source.
