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Israel Bombards Ramallah After Bomb Attacks
JERUSALEM, March 28 (News Agencies) - The Israeli army pounded Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's personal security force Wednesday night in retaliation to a string of bomb attacks, just hours after Arab leaders closed a summit in Jordan with a pledge of support for the Palestinian uprising.
At least one member of Force 17 and a Palestinian woman were killed when Israeli attack helicopters unleashed their weapons on the main West Bank city of Ramallah, while dozens more were wounded in strikes on at least six sites in the Gaza Strip.
The 20-minute attacks were the first against Palestinian targets by the three-week old government of hardline Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and drew a furious reaction from the Palestinians who accused Israel of escalating the situation.
Earlier Wednesday, Arab leaders finished a two-day summit in Amman, where they issued a 52-point final communiqué in which they paid tribute to the "heroic" Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, which erupted exactly half a year ago Wednesday.
Palestinian presidential secretary Tayeb Abdel Rahim told AFP the air strikes were "an escalation of Israeli aggression."
But Sharon's government called the helicopter strikes a "warning" to the Palestinian Authority, after three bomb attacks in less than 24 hours that killed two Palestinians and the shooting death of a child in an apparent sniper attack in the West Bank.
"The purpose here was to hit the terrorists and only those who sent them and those who direct them and to avoid as much as possible hitting the civilian population and I think that mission was accomplished," Sharon spokesman Raanan Gissin told CNN television.
Before attending a meeting of Sharon's security cabinet, Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer said that, "those who believe the government is going to stay with its arms folded are badly mistaken."
"It's a state of war; the Palestinians are fighting us day and night," Ben Eliezer told Israeli public television.
In separate remarks, Sharon said, "the situation is clear and this situation will be stopped. Israel's deterrent capacity will return to its fullest."
Two Israeli teenagers were killed in the attack at a gas station known as "Peace Rendezvous" in Neve Yamin, north of Tel Aviv and close to the Green Line between Israel and the West Bank, while they were waiting for a lift to a religious school at a West Bank settlement.
The bomb blast came a day after two attacks in Jerusalem that killed a bomber and left around 30 people injured, despite heightened security across the country.
Tensions were also running high in the West Bank town of Hebron, where Palestinian gunmen and Israeli soldiers clashed, two days after the Israeli public was enraged by the killing of a 10-month-old Jewish girl, apparently by a Palestinian sniper.
The Israeli army said it hit the Force 17 headquarters in Ramallah as well as several targets in the Gaza Strip, including a weapons depot, a training camp and an armored vehicle.
Israel has frequently accused Force 17 members of helping orchestrate the violence, which has left 453 people dead in six months, the vast majority of them Palestinians.
A senior U.S. official told AFP that Washington "understands the Israeli frustration and need to do what they see as necessary for the security."
But the official urged the Israelis "to consider carefully the effect of the their response and whether or not they risk inciting yet another cycle of reaction and counter-reaction."
Earlier White House spokesman Ari Fleischer condemned the anti-Israeli bombings, saying "there is no excuse, no justification, for the bombings that recently took place in Israel."
Palestinians and Arab leaders have been enraged by the U.S. veto of a U.N. Security Council measure Tuesday that called for an international observer force to be deployed in the Palestinian territories.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Washington used its veto power for the first time in four years to stand "against were what we think are unbalanced, unwise and unworkable steps that don't support the peace process."
In their communiqué, Arab leaders voiced "extreme indignation" at the U.S. move, saying it "does not conform at all with the United States' responsibilities as a sponsor of the peace process."
The Arab leaders mostly found unity over Israel, condemning the Jewish state for its "collective punishment" of the Palestinians, who "are living in danger, under wide scale attack from the Israeli occupation forces using internationally outlawed weapons."
But the Arab leaders continued to be dogged by divisions over Iraq, a decade after Baghdad sent troops into Kuwait.
Iraq rejected a three-point draft resolution that set the framework for its relations with Kuwait and the rest of the world that had been accepted by other summit participants.
Jordan's King Abdullah II, the summit host, was assigned to mediate between Iraq and Kuwait.
The summit also led to a breakthrough when Arafat and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad met Tuesday.
Arafat will travel next month to Syria, which had ostracized him after he signed peace accords with Israel in 1993, Palestinian international cooperation minister Nabil Shaath told AFP.
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