WASHINGTON/GAZA, 11 June — Israeli Army bulldozers piled rubble in front of the entrances to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s headquarters in the West Bank town of Ramallah, blocking all access to the compound, the Palestinian leadership said in a statement yesterday. “The bulldozers, since the afternoon, have sealed off the entrances to the besieged headquarters, with rubble and the frames of cars flattened by tanks and armored vehicles,” the statement said.
At least 70 tanks poured into Ramallah early yesterday morning, surrounded Arafat’s compound and started to comb the city for Palestinians activists.
The leadership accused the army of “demolishing the military intelligence office inside the Muqataa,” the Arabic name for Arafat’s war-torn headquarters, which had been battered just four days before by a six-hour Israeli attack.
Israel wants “to wage an attack on the legitimate leadership headed by Arafat,” it said.
In Washington, US President George W. Bush dismissed Palestinian political reforms as inadequate and endorsed Israel’s latest military action in Palestinian-held lands as he met with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. “No one has confidence in the emerging Palestinian government,” Bush said during a joint public appearance at the White House with Sharon after Israeli forces again besieged Arafat’s headquarters.
“Israel has a right to defend itself,” the US leader said after the raid forced Arafat to cancel the first meeting of his new Cabinet, announced yesterday in a bid to restore international confidence in his leadership.
The deadlock between Israel and the Arab states over how to rekindle peace negotiations emerged starkly yesterday, after White House talks between Bush and Sharon which left prospects for a mooted Middle East conference more cloudy than ever.
One Palestinian was shot dead after troops accompanied by scores of tanks and backed up by combat helicopters pushed into Ramallah at around 3:30 a.m. (0030 GMT), imposing a curfew and conducting house-to-house searches.
The army arrested over two dozen Palestinians in the largest military incursion into autonomous Palestinian territory in weeks.
Scores of tanks and armored personnel carriers, backed by helicopter and machine gun fire, thrust into Ramallah, residents said. Tanks also entered the northern West Bank town of Tulkarm and its refugee camp.
District Governor Ezzedine Al-Sharif said the northern and southern parts of Tulkarm and its refugee camp had been reoccupied by tanks, adding that they had opened fire at his house. Troops arrested in Ramallah yesterday the local chief of Islamic Jihad.
Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo said Israel was trying to undermine the Authority and that Sharon’s visit to Washington “shows that the US administration supports this occupation and operation”.
Palestinian security sources said Israeli forces killed a Palestinian policeman in the Ramallah raid. The Palestinian Authority called for an urgent session of the United Nations Security Council to “stop this crime against our people”.
Residents said armored bulldozers set about destroying the ruins of buildings damaged in an Israeli raid last week, but the army said it had not entered the compound.
Troops also took over the Reuters office in Ramallah. Reuters protested to the army over the incident. A 13-year-old Palestinian girl was killed and 32 other people were injured when an explosion demolished a housing block in Jabaliya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, Palestinian medical sources said. (The Independent)
