RAMALLAH, West Bank , 14 December — Continuing its brutality, Israel yesterday bulldozed the Palestinian television and radio broadcasting center in Ramallah, blew up the main transmitting mast, cut ties with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and unleashed its F-16 jets on Palestinian targets.
A Palestinian was killed in an Israeli air raid in the West Bank city of Ramallah and another was shot dead by Israeli forces during stone-throwing at the Jewish settlement of Neve Dekalim in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian officials said.
Later Israeli soldiers shot dead a 17-year-old Palestinian youth during clashes in the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis.
Ahmad Al-Misri died after being hit by a bullet in the chest during clashes with Israeli troops.
Yet another Palestinian was shot dead in what Israelis said was an exchange of fire near the Jewish settlement of Netzarim in the central Gaza Strip.
The broadcasting center was heavily bombed in overnight helicopter raids and the bulldozers plowed the last remains into the ground. Israeli Army sappers then blew up the antenna used to transmit programs across the West Bank.
Rockets slammed into Palestinian Authority security buildings overnight and tanks moved into Ramallah and parts of Gaza City.
One helicopter missile hit just outside the Ramallah offices where Arafat was working overnight, Palestinian officials said, while tanks took up positions.
Late last night, Israeli aircraft launched strikes on three fronts hitting Palestinian targets in Gaza City, including a mosque compound, and the West Bank towns of Ramallah and Jenin, Palestinian security sources said.
The Israeli Army confirmed the attacks on targets of President Arafat in Gaza and the West Bank but denied a mosque was hit. However the army said it did hit a Palestinian police post and a Force-17 unit — Arafat’s elite guard — in Gaza as well as a police post in Ramallah and an office of Arafat’s mainstream Fatah movement in Jenin.
Israel has banned Arafat from leaving Ramallah, increasing his diplomatic isolation with physical confinement.
Washington, which has turned a blind eye to recent Israeli strikes — including a botched assassination Monday which killed two Palestinian children — said it was still working with Arafat, despite Israel’s move to marginalize the veteran leader. "We consider Arafat to be the leader of the Palestinian people," Assistant Secretary of State William Burns said on a trip to Damascus.
The White House, however, called on Arafat to hunt down those responsible for attacks on Israelis, showing in actions "and not just words" that he wants peace in the Middle East.
Israeli forces advanced to within 100 meters of Arafat’s headquarters in Ramallah after Tel Aviv declared the Palestinian leader irrelevant.
"Arafat is no longer relevant as far as Israel is concerned and there will be no more contact with him," Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s security Cabinet said after an emergency meeting.
Nabil Abu Rudeinah, a senior adviser to Arafat, was quoted by the official Palestinian news agency WAFA as saying Israel had effectively declared war on the Palestinian people. "It is an official war launched by Sharon’s government on our people and it will lead the region into more escalation, instability and violence," Abu Rudeinah said.
Israel’s Internal Security Minister Uzi Landau said yesterday he did not rule out sending Arafat back to Tunis, and warned that the Palestinian Authority had not yet felt the full weight of Tel Aviv’s wrath after a spate of deadly attacks.
Asked in an interview published yesterday in Le Monde newspaper about the possibility of sending Arafat back to the place where the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was based before the 1993 Oslo accords, he said: "It is a tactical question, a question of political opportunity. We should not exclude this possibility."
Israeli troops yesterday stormed the Ramallah house of Marwan Barghuti, the West Bank head of Arafat’s Fatah faction, but failed to find the man seen as one of the most vocal spokesmen of the uprising, his wife Ruba told AFP.
"Around 25 Israeli soldiers are now inside the house and they are searching it. They said they could be staying for up to five days," Ruba told an AFP correspondent by telephone.
Some 30 Palestinians were wounded, none seriously, in the Gaza airstrikes, which included an attack on Gaza International Airport, a symbol of Palestinian aspirations for statehood.
Israeli tanks demolished several positions held by Arafat’s elite Force-17 and National Security Forces in Ramallah and took over five of the city’s six entry points.
Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo demanded international intervention "to stop Sharon’s war".
Abed Rabbo said it was impossible to implement the Palestinian commitments "under the shadow of the comprehensive war". He said Palestinians would "carry out their duties" the moment the Israeli military campaign stopped.
An 11-year-old Palestinian boy was in critical condition yesterday after Israeli troops shot him and five other boys in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, Palestinian hospital sources said.
The 11-year-old was hit in the head when Israeli troops opened fire on civilians from a watchtower on the border with Egypt, the sources said. Two boys aged 13, two aged 14 and a 15-year-old were also hurt.
In Cairo, Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa called yesterday for a meeting of the UN Security Council as soon as possible to try to find a way to restore peace in the Middle East.
Moussa said that, after telephone contacts with a majority of Arab foreign ministers and Palestinian leader Arafat, agreement had been reached "to seek the convening as soon as possible of a meeting of the UN Security Council."
"There is an understanding with President Arafat about the need for an urgent and extraordinary Security Council meeting to examine the dangerous situation in the occupied Palestinian territories," he said.
A Palestinian delegate currently in Paris, Leila Shahid, called on the international community yesterday to intervene immediately and send an international protection force to the Palestinian territories to help avoid a "carnage" there.
Meanwhile, Israel’s decision to stop doing business with Yasser Arafat sparked alarm in the Arab world and beyond yesterday, with a UN official warning the two sides are nearer than ever to "a full military confrontation".
