GAZA, 19 January — Israel destroyed a Palestinian security compound in an airstrike and sealed off the residence of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in Ramallah yesterday as Syria equated the current Israeli atrocities with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.
The Israeli raid, in retaliation for the killing of six people at a Jewish birthday party in the town of Hadera on Thursday, killed one policeman and injured 40 people in the West Bank city of Tulkarm.
Witnesses said troops shot dead another Palestinian during a stone-throwing clash near Arafat’s headquarters in Ramallah in the West Bank.
Syria equated the Sept. 11 attacks against the World Trade Center with Israel’s demolition of Palestinian homes in the Gaza Strip, drawing immediate criticism from the United States.
In his debut speech as a new UN Security Council member, Syrian representative Fayssal Mekdad said the 15-member body practiced a double standard in denouncing terrorism around the world but avoiding condemnation of Israel.
"We must note the scene of tens of Palestinian houses which were demolished by Israeli tanks in the Rafah camps a few days ago is not much different from the scene of the World Trade Center which was destroyed by the terrorists, whom we have all agreed here to combat and eliminate," Mekdad said.
The Israeli military last week demolished dozens of houses in the southern Gaza Strip, saying the buildings had been abandoned and were being used as cover for gunmen. The International Committee of the Red Cross said some 600 people were left homeless in the Rafah refugee camp.
A US official told reporters that "the idea of equating the destruction of the World Trade Center and the demolition of homes that has been going on in the territories is outrageous". "It’s really unfortunate the Syrians took this opportunity of an open meeting on counterterrorism to make what we saw as an outrageous speech. This is not the kind of speech we would expect to come from a responsible member of the Security Council," the official said.
The new cycle of death and retribution pushed Israel and the Palestinians deeper into a conflict that US and European truce efforts have sometimes calmed but never quelled.
Before dawn, Israeli F-16 warplanes fired missiles at the main security headquarters in Tulkarm, reducing the building to rubble. The Israeli Army said the air raid was a response to the shooting rampage in Hadera. The Palestinian Authority condemned the attack.
Hundreds of people demonstrated across the Palestinian territories in protest at the Palestinian Authority’s arrest of PFLP leader Ahmed Saadat. In the Nusseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip some 800 people gathered to protest Arafat’s arrest of the head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, detained Tuesday by Palestinian intelligence agents.
