TULKARM, West Bank, 13 November 2002 — Israeli tanks and troops swept into a refugee camp in the West Bank yesterday after five Israelis were killed in an attack on a kibbutz. Witnesses and security sources said about 30 Israeli tanks, armored troop carriers and jeeps raided the camp around 3 a.m. (0100 GMT) and swept through the streets.

They said two Palestinians had been arrested amid heavy gunfire but there were no injuries. Troops withdrew to the outskirts after several hours but imposed a curfew on Tulkarm city, close to the “Green Line” dividing Israel and the West Bank.

Yesterday’s incursion was the first time the new extreme rightist government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had to decide on military action since the Labour Party, seen as a moderating influence, walked out of a broad based coalition on Oct. 30. Israeli security sources said Israel decided on military action in the Tulkarm and Nablus areas of the West Bank because they were suspected of links to Sunday night’s assault on Kibbutz Metzer.

In the village of Shweike, north of Tulkarm, Israeli troops demolished the house of Muhammad Naifeh, described as a senior activist from the armed wing of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement. The army said Naifeh was responsible for Sunday’s attack.

The Palestinian Authority condemned the latest Israeli military operation. “The Israeli military escalation is very grave and it will lead to negative consequences. The American administration should press toward finding a political solution,” said Nabil Abu Rudeina, a senior aide to Arafat.

In the latest violence, a two-year-old Palestinian boy was shot dead in his father’s arms in Rafah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip on Monday night, medics said. Palestinian witnesses said the gunfire came from an Israeli Army watchtower and that the shooting was unprovoked.

The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Fatah, said it carried out the attack in the Israeli village to avenge Israel’s killing of an Islamist commander and vowed “more martyrdom attacks until occupation leaves our land”.

The Palestinian Authority expressed “strong condemnation of the killing of civilians” but said it was carried out while a “brutal war machine” was killing Palestinian men, women and children. Hopes for a halt to bombings in the uprising were renewed after Palestinian officials said the Islamic group Hamas had discussed a possible one-year suspension of such attacks during talks with Fatah in Cairo on Monday.

But the new violence clouded US envoy David Satterfield’s visit to push a new peace “road map” entailing reciprocal steps by the two sides — mainly Palestinian reforms and Israeli military withdrawals — leading to a Palestinian state in 2005.

The proposal, part of efforts by a “Quartet” of US, European Union, UN and Russian mediators, has met with skepticism from Palestinian officials and Israeli ministers. Arafat said yesterday that Palestinians accepted in principle the proposed “road map” and would respond to the United States after consulting Arab states. “We are still discussing it with the Arabs. After that we will offer our complete response. As you remember, we had accepted it in principle,” Arafat told reporters after meeting Russian envoy Andrei Vdovin at his Ramallah headquarters.

Vdovin told reporters the mediators were exerting maximum effort to end the violence and guarantee the establishment of an independent Palestinian state at a specified timetable. “The road map will be ready by mid-December so it can be finally approved by the Quartet,” he said.

Netanyahu, trying to outflank Sharon on the right, vowed yesterday that if he were elected prime minister he would expel Arafat. The hawkish ex-premier, vying for leadership of the rightist Likud for a Jan. 28 election, told party members Arafat was “head of the murderers” behind the raid on a kibbutz. “I as prime minister will expel Arafat,” Netanyahu told a party convention in Tel Aviv in his most scathing attack on the Palestinian leader since being appointed last week after the collapse of Sharon’s unity coalition.

Before joining the government, Netanyahu repeatedly called for Arafat’s expulsion during two years of Israeli-Palestinian violence. He had toned down his public remarks after accepting the foreign minister’s post, though he said on Monday it was only a matter of time before Arafat’s administration was removed. (The Independent)