OCCUPIED RAMALLAH, West Bank, September 22 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - After a night of relentless bulldozing which left Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s office the only building still standing in his compound, the Israeli army was Sunday, September 22, gnawing away at Arafat’s last redoubt, where he and 250 people are crammed in four rooms.

According to security sources inside the office, an Israeli excavator was only centimeters away from the area where the Palestinian leader and his entourage were enduring their third day of siege, in increasingly precarious conditions, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

“We have no water, no phone lines and no air-conditioning. Only part of the building still has electricity,” another official inside the threatened office told AFP over a mobile phone.

“It’s very hot and close in here. It’s starting to smell quite bad,” the official said, referring to the lack of water since Friday morning causing clogging in the toilets and bathrooms.

The official said the three-storey structure, which was built by the British during their 1923-1948 administration of Palestine, was “shaking from the ongoing bulldozing. We feel them coming closer and closer.”

Two gigantic, yellow-colored excavators could be seen tearing down the building on each of its flanks, with their iron arms stretching all the way to the rooftop and their large heads methodically poking all the way down to the basement.

Unlike the previous three days, the army was using civilian heavy machinery rather than its usual army-green excavators.

The governor’s office, which stands at the western end of the building, had been completely wrecked by dawn, leaving only a wall between the excavators and Arafat’s offices.

Two tanks were watching over the demolition from a mere ten meters, their guns pointed at the building. An army bulldozer was waiting at their side to collect the rubble.

“We’re getting very little sleep. We’re all crammed up with not enough mattresses for everybody,” said former Palestinian finance minister Salam Fayad, staying next to Arafat on the building’s second floor.

The army, using tanks and bulldozers, took over the Ramallah compound late Thursday after an emergency cabinet meeting decided to isolate Arafat, whom Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s government blames for every anti-Israeli attack.

The cabinet demanded the surrender of some 20 Palestinians wanted for alleged involvement in attacks and said to be holed up with the Palestinian leader.

They include West Bank intelligence chief Tawfiq Tirawi and the commander of Arafat’s Force 17 bodyguard, Mahmud Damra.

Forty-three men have turned themselves in to date but Palestinian and Israeli security sources said none of them are on the wanted list.

On Saturday, the former Labor Minister Ghassan Khatib said that Arafat will “never” hand the 20 Palestinians.

“After discussions and consultations with the Palestinian leadership - and this is not subject to discussion - the Palestinian leadership will never deal with this issue ... it would be like political suicide,” Khatib told AFP.

“So it’s not going to happen. Sharon can keep people under siege as long as he wants,” he added.

In another development Palestinian parliamentary speaker Ahmed Qorei spoke with Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and other senior officials in a bid to defuse the crisis provoked by the siege on Arafat’s compound, a source close to Qorei said Sunday.

Qorei “spoke with Peres and with a number of other senior Israeli officials,” the source said, without giving details of what was discussed, AFP reported.

According to a report on Israel army radio, Qorei spoke with Sharon, Peres and Ben Eliezer over the course of the weekend and was told that Israel had no intention of harming Arafat, but that the siege would continue until the 20 wanted men inside had turned themselves over.

Meanwhile, Israeli troops killed shot dead four Palestinians as thousands of angry protestors defied a curfew in the West Bank early Sunday, challenging the military’s siege of Arafat’s headquarters.

The demonstrators, already furious over the army’s three-month reoccupation of the West Bank, faced off with troops who had escalated their assault on Arafat’s Ramallah compound with a threat to blow up the building sheltering Arafat and about 200 of his followers.

The demonstrations erupted in the West Bank town of Ramallah when a group of around 30 foreign peace activists were joined by hundreds of Palestinian residents in a march toward Arafat’s battered compound where the army is demanding the Palestinian leader hand over 20 wanted resistance fighters.

Two demonstrators, including a journalist, were killed during the overnight demonstrations in Ramallah, where more than 1,000 people rallied, while another was killed in the Balata refugee camp by Nablus, where at least 2,000 protested, and a fourth Palestinian was shot dead by Israeli fire in the West Bank town of Tulkarem, medical sources and witnesses said.

“Abu Amar (Yasser Arafat), we will sacrifice our blood and soul for you,” chanted Arafat supporters massed at the Surda checkpoint, as military helicopters circled over the city and the Muqataa.

Demonstrations also flared in Bethlehem and Jenin, as well as in the Gaza Strip, with gun-toting protestors firing in the air in Gaza City and the southern towns of Rafah and Khan Yunis.

Occupation soldiers’ voices boomed in Arabic over loudspeakers, demanding everyone inside the building “come out immediately one by one with your hands up because a huge explosion is going to happen.”

“They have called on us to give up and surrender or they will blow up the offices on our heads,” a Palestinian security official inside Arafat’s offices told AFP.

At one point, Israel troops raised a flag on a nearby building in the compound. When told of the flag, Arafat got up to take a look from a window, said Hani al-Hassan, a senior PLO official trapped inside, CBS News reported.

As demonstrators also poured into the streets of the northern West Bank city of Nablus, Israeli occupation troops also opened fire, killing 19-year-old Ryad Hashash in the flashpoint refugee camp of Balata, medical sources said. Another Palestinian was seriously wounded in the same incident.

A young Palestinian who was critically injured in similar circumstances in Tulkarem, died of his wounds later on, medical sources said.

In another development all Palestinian hospitals and medical facilities were put on red alert for casualties.

“We have declared a state of emergency in all the hospitals in the West Bank because for all the people going out into the streets,” Munzar al-Sharif said.