RAMALLAH, West Bank, 30 March — In the most dramatic day yet of the 18-month intifada against the Israeli occupation, which Palestinian leaders unanimously declared to be all-out war against their people, Israeli tanks and troops yesterday smashed their way into Palestinian chief Yasser Arafat’s compound, arresting more than 70 Palestinians. Seven Palestinians were killed in the initial assault, and 40 were injured.
Shortly afterward, a rocket reduced much of the compound itself to rubble, and Arafat’s own private office was sprayed with machine-gun fire.
Reports coming from a basement office in which Arafat, his aides and body guards had taken refuge spoke of the Palestinian Authority chief being ready for any eventuality, his gun cocked and ready in his hand. Once again, the dominant image was of a fragile man taking on the might of the Israeli military machine with total defiance.
“I will be a martyr,” he said in a telephone interview at the height of the drama, which has once again focused the world’s attention on the plight of his people. The whole of the Arab world remained glued to their television screen throughout yesterday. As Arafat was speaking, dozens of Israeli tanks, troops and helicopters were reported to have taken control of the whole city of Ramallah, where Arafat’s compound is based.
The Israeli “response” to the Middle East “crisis” unsurprisingly drew sympathy and understanding from Israel’s military, political and economic backer the United States, with Secretary of State Colin Powell placing the blame for the upsurge in violence squarely at the door of the Palestinian bombers.
Arafat, in an interview with Abu Dhabi television later, accused the United States of giving its consent to Israel’s military offensive on his West Bank headquarters.
In his own press conference, Colin Powell reiterated that Israel “did not want to kill” the Palestinian leader.
Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat later said the Israeli action amounted to a declaration of a “comprehensive war”.
Israeli state radio quoted Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as saying yesterday’s push was the start of an offensive to end Palestinian attacks that will last “at least weeks” and feature operations “on a large scale without precedent.”
In Jerusalem, an 18-year-old girl, Aaeat Al Akhras, killed herself and two Israelis in a west Jerusalem supermarket. Twenty-eight people were wounded, two seriously, in the attack claimed by the Al-Aqsa Brigades, an armed offshoot of Arafat’s Fatah. The bombing, the second by a Palestinian woman, rocked the large supermarket in the Kiryat Yovel district at a time when many Israelis were doing their shopping.
Israeli police stormed Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque complex after Arab youths threw rocks at Jewish worshipers at the Wailing Wall below, authorities said.
Sharon’s government said it was calling up 20,000 reservists in a new escalation of the conflict. “The government has decided to consider Arafat, who is the head of a terrorist coalition, as an enemy, who at this stage must be isolated,” Sharon told a news conference early yesterday.
Arafat, who had tried to head off the assault with a last-ditch appeal for an unconditional cease-fire late Thursday, said he was under tank and missile attack but remained defiant. “They want me to become a prisoner or fugitive, or dead,” he told the Al-Jazeera. “But I tell them no, (I’ll be) a martyr, a martyr, a martyr.”
Israeli troops arrested a military adviser to Arafat after raiding his home in Ramallah, his family said yesterday.
Gen. Mahmud Daass, who is also a member of the Palestinian Parliament, was “led to an unknown destination along with his bodyguard” in the afternoon, a London-based family member told AFP in Dubai by telephone.
Earlier, Israeli tanks moved against Arafat’s compound, with a bulldozer smashing through the main gate, the security sources said.
Tanks fired on the headquarters and Palestinian officials said Israeli soldiers occupied two buildings that housed security guards and intelligence services but had not gone into Arafat’s offices.
Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer told reporters that Israel had “no interest in reconquering or re-occupying the Palestinian territories”. He said the Israelis were not seeking to deport Arafat, who has been bottled up in Ramallah for four months, or make war on the Palestinian people, but were intent on eradicating “the infrastructure of terrorism.”
