GAZA CITY, 5 December — Israel launched massive air raids across the West Bank and Gaza City yesterday, and hit a police building near Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s main West Bank offices while he was inside. The missiles hit less than 30 meters from his office. Arafat was unhurt in the attacks. Israeli military sources were quoted as calling the strikes "only part of what was expected in the coming days".
Among the targets hit yesterday was the Ramallah compound housing Arafat’s West Bank headquarters. Two missiles hit an empty guard post adjoining the Palestinian leader’s office. A third missile hit a building further into the compound.
Shortly afterward, Israeli F-16 fighter planes and helicopters attacked the Gaza Strip, rocketing nine buildings belonging to the Palestinian Preventive Security, Arafat’s Force 17 presidential guard and Palestinian intelligence in Gaza City, Khan Younis and Rafah.
The warplanes launched seven missiles at the walled compound and destroyed five buildings and a mosque.
Israel earlier yesterday declared Arafat’s Palestinian Authority a "terror-supporting entity", setting the stage for harsher attacks. A Cabinet statement also branded the military wing of Arafat’s Fatah organization and his elite Force 17 security unit to be "terrorist groups", making them potential targets.
Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo dismissed the declaration, saying Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza was the "source of terrorism" while Fatah vowed to continue the 14-month-old Palestinian uprising.
Frightened schoolchildren scurried for cover as clouds of black smoke billowed and shrapnel flew in Gaza. Panic-stricken Palestinians pitched several wounded children and their school backpacks into ambulances that screamed away toward hospital.
Parents, some of them weeping, ran into the streets looking for their children as jets hovered overhead.
The strikes left at least three dead and over 120 injured, half of them schoolboys. The United States immediately backed Israel’s attacks on Palestinian targets and at the same time called on Arafat to step up his efforts to seek a solution to the conflict.
"I think Arafat can do a lot more than we have seen so far," Secretary of State Colin Powell said in Bucharest where he is attending a two-day conference of foreign ministers of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
Israeli forces also launched attacks on key Palestinian symbols of autonomy, including Gaza International Airport.
Later Israeli forces withdrew from the airport after wrecking the runway. Tanks and jeeps had invaded the airport in the early hours yesterday and bulldozers churned up the runway to make it unusable for aircraft, a Palestinian liaison official told AFP. Israeli troops entered Palestinian-ruled areas in Nablus and Ramallah early yesterday killing one Palestinian in Nablus, according to Palestinian security sources.
Israeli tanks entered Nablus from the west, near the village of Tel, and engaged Palestinian security forces and armed gunmen in the area, said the sources.
The Israeli Army confirmed airstrikes on eight Palestinian security buildings, including the Ramallah police headquarters next to Arafat’s own offices.
The attacks came as Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said he did not believe Israeli forces would take direct action against the Palestinian leader.
"Upon my return home, we shall meet and decide," Peres, who is in Bucharest said when asked about the possibility of his party withdrawing from Sharon’s government.
Arafat told CNN television that Sharon was trying to torpedo his (Arafat’s) crackdown on terrorism with the airstrikes.
"He doesn’t want me to succeed, and for this he is escalating his military activities against our towns, our cities, our establishments," the Palestinian leader said.
"Sharon wants to destroy the peace process and then to destroy everything else. He thinks that by targeting the Palestinian Authority and its leader Arafat he will solve the problem, but he is mistaken," said Palestinian Cabinet Secretary Ahmed Abdel Rahman.
Sharon’s hard words and airstrikes opened major divisions in his cross-party government, with left-wing Peres denouncing what he called a bid during Monday’s emergency Cabinet meeting to cause the downfall of the Palestinian Authority. In a later development yesterday Peres said he would call a meeting of his Labour Party to decide whether it should remain in the coalition government.
Israeli public radio reported yesterday Sharon asked his army officers "to act in an aggressive manner against nests of terrorism" while visiting military positions in the occupied West Bank.
Turkey, Israel’s closest regional ally, condemned yesterday’s air raids as unjust, warning it could trigger major turmoil in the region. Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair and Bush expressed "sympathy" with Israel and called on all sides "to do anything they can to stabilize the situation" in the Middle East in a telephone call late Monday," Blair’s spokesman said.
Jordan, acting head nation of the Arab League, has called for an emergency Arab ministerial meeting Sunday in Cairo to discuss the latest Israeli military escalation in the Palestinian territories, Jordanian Foreign Minister Abdel Ilah Khatib told AFP yesterday.
"Following contacts made by King Abdallah to confront the deteriorating Palestinian situation, it has been decided as a first action to convene a meeting Sunday in Cairo of the Arab follow-up committee," Khatib said.
The European Union urged Israel yesterday not to destroy the Palestinian Authority, saying the Jewish state still needed Arafat’s autonomous administration as a peace partner and to fight extremism.
"While the right of the Israeli government to defend itself against terrorism is recognized, at the same time we call on Israel for a measured and proportionate response within respect of the rule of law," the EU said.
