NABLUS/WASHINGTON, 5 April — Israel yesterday shrugged off a call by President George W. Bush to pull its troops out of Palestinian territories as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon vowed no letup in his bid to bring the Palestinians to their knees and troops occupied Nablus, the seventh major Palestinian town and moved armor to Hebron.
Bush announced he would send Secretary of State Colin Powell to the region next week, and pressed Israel to withdraw its forces, while also saying Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat had “betrayed” his people.
But experts say the announcement by the president was “too little too late.”
“I applaud his call for an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories in accordance with UN Resolution 242, and his reiteration of support for a Palestinian state. But I think that it is too little too late — he is not sending Powell out until next week, and he should have sent him there yesterday,” Kathleen Christison, former political analyst on the Middle East for the Central Intelligence Agency and author of Perceptions of Palestine: Their Influence on US Middle East Policy, told Arab News in a telephone interview yesterday.
By delaying Powell’s trip to the region, President Bush is giving Sharon “who still has the green light that Bush gave him over the weekend, he is now giving him the opportunity to ‘clean up’ in Ramallah and in the other cities the Israelis are now occupying,” said Christison.
“Bush did urge the Israelis to pull back from the cities, but his request was much too weak; it should have been a demand rather than a request,” she said. “Although I think he thought he was being even-handed and balanced, the whole tone of his talk was much too accommodating to Israel and to what the Israelis have done in the West Bank this past week.”
Israeli Finance Minister Silvan Shalom said yesterday in response to President Bush’s call for a withdrawal that “if there is a cease-fire, there’s no reason to stay in the Palestinian territories, but a cease-fire requires both sides.”
The Israeli Army’s methodical town-by-town march came as Sharon vowed no letup in his bid to bring the Palestinians to their knees.
Tanks pushed their way into the heart of Nablus, the seventh major Palestinian town in as many days to see Israeli forces blast in and take control. Only two major West Bank towns are still outside Israel’s grip.
Palestinians battled back with rifles, grenades, mortars and rockets as Israeli troops, as they have done elsewhere, went on the hunt for activists suspected of being behind anti-Israeli attacks.
At least three Palestinians in Nablus were shot dead by Israeli troops, who Sharon says have been ordered to wipe out the “terrorist infrastructure” which Israel blames for the violence which has killed 1,700 people in 18 months.
Israeli tanks also rolled into the divided West Bank city of Hebron yesterday, witnesses said.
They said scores of tanks, armored personnel carriers and military jeeps, backed by four helicopter gunships, had thrust into the city from the south, meeting only scattered resistance.
The army said yesterday it had arrested 1,100 Palestinians and seized quantities of weapons. The Palestinian leadership issued a statement calling on its people to brace for a “long resistance” against Israeli troops.
In Casablanca, Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard, received yesterday a telephone call from Powell. The crown prince discussed with Powell the deteriorating situation in the Middle East.
Bush also lauded yesterday Crown Prince Abdullah’s peace initiative describing it as historic.
Sharon dismissed international calls to lift the siege on Arafat. “He will stay where he is. The target of the operation is to uproot terrorist activity in areas under Palestinian control. Only when this is achieved will peace be discussed,” Sharon told reporters.
Israeli daily newspaper Ha’aretz reported yesterday Sharon gave the green light for US envoy Anthony Zinni to meet with Arafat. Zinni may meet Arafat today.
Bush, long hesitant to criticize Washington’s main Middle East ally, said Israel should pull back its forces, hailing the moment of crisis as a chance for peace.
But he also said Arafat was to blame for the siege that seems already to have dismantled much of the Palestinian Authority that was intended to govern a future independent state. “The situation in which he finds himself today is largely of his own making,” he said in an address at the White House. “He’s missed his opportunities and thereby betrayed the hopes of the people he is supposed to lead.”
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat rejected Bush’s charges that Arafat had “betrayed his people,” recalling he was the elected leader of the Palestinians.
Bush also again blasted Iran and Iraq — part of his “axis of evil” — and said Syria had to “decide which side” of the war on terrorism it was on. Both countries support Hezbollah fighters battling Israel.
The Palestinians say the real intention of Israel’s military campaign is to topple or kill Arafat, Sharon’s longtime bitter foe, and re-occupy the land Israel handed over under interim peace accords in the 1990s.
They increasingly fear that after the West Bank the Israelis will turn their attention to the Gaza Strip, where the armed wings of the main Palestinian movements said yesterday they were readying an unprecedented “unified operations cell.”
Earlier Israeli Army chief Gen. Shaul Mofaz called for the expulsion of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat during a news conference yesterday. He said Israeli generals favored expelling Arafat from his homeland.
But Shimon Peres, the dovish foreign minister who has frequently clashed with the hard-line Sharon, said: “We are not going to hurt Arafat or dismantle the Palestinian Authority.”
“We are not going to re-occupy the places. In a couple of weeks we’ll be out,” Peres said. But he added: “We are forced to do these things. We cannot begin to understand the Palestinians.”
In Bethlehem, Palestinian gunmen were still holed up in the Church of the Nativity, one of the holiest sites in Christianity, which is surrounded by Israeli troops. Israel says dozens of Palestinian gunmen are inside.
Palestinian sources inside the church said the Israeli Army had blown an iron door off the church compound.
At least one Palestinian was shot dead at the site, which has been sealed off by the army.
Pope John Paul has called on Roman Catholics to observe a world day of prayer for peace in the Middle East “at such a serious moment for all humanity,” the Vatican announced yesterday.
Police in Lebanon said nine missiles were fired yesterday from Lebanon on an Israeli radar station on the edge of the disputed Shebaa Farms border area.
The Grad rockets, which have a range of 20 km were fired from an area of southern Lebanon outside the control of the United Nations Interim Forces in south Lebanon (UNIFIL), the police said.
In Cairo, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak yesterday reminded the United States of its “special responsibility” to the peace process, saying he has twice in the last week urged US President George W. Bush to intervene with Israel to lift the siege on the Palestinians.
