GAZA CITY, 3 February — Israeli helicopter gunships rocketed a Palestinian naval police headquarters in the Gaza Strip town of Deir Al-Balah yesterday morning, Palestinian security sources said. No injuries, however, were reported in the attack which severely damaged the naval police building, security sources said.
The Israeli attack was allegedly in response to Palestinian activity in the area, including mortar fire on a nearby Israeli Army post and an attack on an outpost guarding the Jewish settlement of Kfar Darom, an Israeli Army statement said.
Israeli tanks earlier stormed Palestinian-controlled territory near the Gaza Strip town, and seriously injured four Palestinians with machine-gun bullets, Palestinian security and hospital sources said. The Israeli Army said tanks were sent into the area to hunt down militants who opened fire and threw grenades at an army post near the Kfar Darom settlement.
Meanwhile, the hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon remained unrelenting in his first meeting with Palestinian officials since becoming Israel’s prime minister, though his dovish foreign minister welcomed the contacts as a positive step.
As details of the meeting were being revealed yesterday, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat suffered another blow when one of the main factions of the Palestine Liberation Organization withdrew from its executive committee.
Sharon met in Jerusalem on Wednesday with the Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Ahmad Qorei, PLO No. 2 Mahmoud Abbas and Muhammad Rashid, economic adviser to Arafat, sources on both sides said. The meeting was kept secret until Israeli public radio reported it on Friday evening. Arafat, who has been trapped in his West Bank headquarters of Ramallah since early December, told reporters yesterday he had approved the meeting.
When asked by AFP about the Sharon-Palestinian meeting, a spokesman for the premier refused to comment, saying only that Sharon maintains his position of “not embarking on political negotiations as long as the Palestinians continue with violence.”
Sharon has recently come under unprecedented domestic criticism for his handling of security issues, and public radio said the premier had reiterated a number of demands he has made to the Palestinians on this front. These were for the arrest of “all terrorists,” the dismantling of “terrorist” organizations and the confiscation of their weapons, “serious” operations to block anti-Israeli attacks and an end to “campaigns of incitement.”
The radio said the Palestinians had demanded a halt to Israel’s policy of assassinating Palestinian activists, a freeze on Israeli military incursions into autonomous Palestinian zones, the lifting of Arafat’s virtual house arrest and an end to the blockade of the Palestinian territories.
