OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 24 June — The Israeli government decided yesterday to look into the legal possibility of expelling families of bombers in a new step to crack down on attacks, as its army expanded its control over the West Bank. The army rolled back into the West Bank town of Qalqilya and also took over a village near Jenin where it triggered clashes that left a Palestinian policemen reported dead and three people wounded.
As the Israelis maintained their tight grip on six of the eight principal West Bank towns, military officials began calling up the first 2,000 reservists mobilized to beef up the army as it geared for a long-haul operation.
The regular weekly meeting of the Israeli Cabinet chaired by the hawkish Prime Minister Ariel Sharon yesterday debated additional tough measures, including banishing relatives of suicide bombers from the West Bank.
“The government decided to examine the legal possibilities (that would allow) the expulsion of families of those who commit attacks,” government secretary Gideon Saar told reporters afterward.
Saar did not say where they would moved to. But Israeli public radio and Effi Eitam, minister without portfolio from the extreme right-wing National Religious Party, both suggested the more tightly sealed Gaza Strip.
“We are today at war and in addition to all the defense measures such as the construction of a security barrier, we must take offensive action such as the expulsion of families of terrorists to the Gaza Strip,” Eitam said.
Palestinian minister Saeb Erekat said Israel was “resuming fully its occupation” of territory handed over under interim peace deals and aimed to destroy the Palestinian Authority. Palestinian witnesses said about 60 Israeli heavy armed vehicles, including tanks and armored personnel carriers, pushed into Qalqilya and surrounded two buildings, calling on residents to leave. No resistance was reported.
“It is their fatal mistake to reoccupy again these Palestinian territories,” President Yasser Arafat told reporters, saying it would affect regional stability. “They are agreeing to cancel what was agreed upon from Oslo until now.”
The Israeli Cabinet also gave the go-ahead to complete work on the first 102 kilometers of a controversial barrier along the West Bank aimed at keeping would-be suicide bombers bottled up. Work started June 16 on the first part of what would eventually be a 350-kilometer montage of fences, trenches and walls with electronic devices that has drawn sharp criticism from Palestinians.
In the West Bank, Israel seized and imposed curfews in the towns of Bethlehem, Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarm and Qalqilya. It also controlled all major access points to Ramallah. Israeli troops backed by 10 tanks entered the northern West Bank village of Al-Yamun west of Jenin, killing a Palestinian policeman and wounding another, according to Palestinian security sources.
Israeli troops conducted house-to-house searches for militants in Jenin. Israeli forces wounded nine Palestinians, including a 10-year-old boy, in various other incidents yesterday on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, according to Palestinian sources.
Amid concern in Israel that the 180,000-strong Israeli Army might become too stretched by another prolonged military operation on the West Bank, officials began an emergency call-up of reservists.
A military source told the public radio that initially some 2,000 men, comprising three battalions and various other units, would be mobilized. “If necessary we will call up more,” the source added.
But a Defense Ministry statement sought to dispel reports the Israelis were planning a new military administration of the West Bank towns. “It is certainly not our intention to reinstall a government or military administration by Israel for the inhabitants of the autonomous Palestinian cities where the army has intervened to fight terrorism,” it said.
The hardening of positions on both sides of the conflict came as US President George W. Bush struggled to finalize details of his eagerly anticipated strategy for Palestinian statehood and Middle East peace.
Arafat, meanwhile, met with in Ramallah with Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Moasher, who condemned the Israeli reoccupation of Palestinian towns and cautioned Israel against “setting back the hands of the clock” in the conflict.
