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Powell
arrived in Israel on a peace mission overshadowed by Israeli
defiance over its ruthless West Bank offensive. |
JERUSALEM,
April 12 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – U.S. Secretary of
State, Colin Powell, met Friday, April 12, with hawkish Israeli Prime
Minister, Ariel Sharon, in a high-stakes bid to stop Israel’s
ruthless fortnight offensive on the West Bank, as the Israeli army
admitted to killing hundreds of Palestinians in the Jenin refugee
camp.
Powell
went into a first round of talks Friday with Sharon, who has rebuffed
U.S. demands to stop Israel's military blitz of the Palestinians in
the West Bank, and then was to bring in aides for a larger meeting. He
was later to confer with Israeli Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres,
Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
Powell
flew in Thursday night from Jordan, his last stop on a tour of Arab
capitals and of Spain, where he secured strong international support
for his drive to speed the withdrawal of Israeli occupation troops
from Palestinian self-rule areas and broker a ceasefire.
On
Saturday, April 13, he is expected to meet with Palestinian President,
Yasser Arafat, in his battered headquarters in the West Bank city of
Ramallah, where Arafat has been kept under siege by the Israelis since
March 29.
Arafat
took a hard line Thursday night, pledging that the Palestinians were
willing to die to defend Jerusalem.
"We
will defend the Arab nation. We will defend the holy Christian and
Muslim sites and we will die defending Jerusalem," Arafat said,
addressing by phone a 2,000-strong rally at Cairo's Coptic cathedral.
Powell
has denied he was on a "mission impossible" with his
open-ended trip hoping to break the cycle of violence that has
mushroomed into the region's worst crisis since the 1991 Gulf War.
Arab
rage over the bloody Israeli military assault has been boiling
throughout the region, and will not be cooled by the Israeli army's
announcement that hundreds of Palestinians were killed in the Jenin
refugee camp.
"Several
hundred Palestinians were killed,” an Israeli military spokesman
told army radio, denying, though, claims of a massacre.
“There
was very fierce fighting as the Israeli losses show," he told
army radio. The army said 23 of its soldiers died in the Jenin camp,
including 13 who were caught in a high-precision Palestinian ambush on
Tuesday.
Palestinian
Information Minister, Yasser Abed Rabbo, said this week that some
reports indicated about 100 Palestinians were killed in the Jenin camp
Saturday, April 6, alone.
Chief
Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erakat, accused Israel Thursday, April
11, of killing around 500 Palestinians in its West Bank offensive,
saying Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had gone "crazy".
"There
are 500 Palestinians killed in the last 12 days in the West Bank;
there is a major Israeli crime going on in the West Bank against our
society," he said.
Israeli
officials had no immediate comment at first, but a military source
disputed Erakat's figure. However, the source said the total number of
Palestinian deaths in the West Bank operation was "over
200.".
Erakat
also accused Israeli forces of carrying out summary executions of
Palestinian prisoners in Jenin.
Jenin
fell to the army Wednesday, April 10, after a week of hard fighting.
“Today
[Wednesday], the Israelis assassinated eight Palestinians in Jenin.
They had surrendered to the army and they [the army] shot them,”
Erakat said.
“Sharon
is making war against the Palestinian people and the Palestinian
leadership to kill all Palestinians and destroy the Palestinian
people,” Erakat said. “His war will not help the Israeli people.
Sharon has gone crazy."
Hence,
Powell's first task will be to persuade a truculent Sharon to roll
back the West Bank campaign.
Powell
also hopes to revive stalled talks on security measures proposed by
CIA chief, George Tenet, and a longer-term peace blueprint developed
by a panel chaired by former U.S. senator George Mitchell.
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A
Palestinian woman collapses after her husband was killed by
Israeli soldiers in Jenin, April 11. |
"We
look forward to move aggressively with respect to political
action," he said in Jordan. "The political process in
Mitchell has to be accelerated and extended upon in order to show the
Palestinian people that there is hope out there for them to have their
own state side by side with Israel."
But
Powell appeared to be on a collision course with Sharon, who insists
he cannot afford to call off the campaign.
"I've
warned the Americans that the Israeli army will not withdraw from
Bethlehem, Jenin, Nablus and Ramallah," Sharon said Thursday.
He
also warned that the army could, moreover, move back into towns they
have quit in the West Bank.
While
Israel has closed off most of the West Bank, making the situation
impossible to verify independently, sources on both sides said the
Israelis had re-entered the northern West Bank town of Tulkarem for
about 45 minutes early, AFP reported.
The
sheer size of the Israeli operation, launched March 29, was driven
home with the announcement the army had already arrested 4,185
Palestinians -- a jump of 2,000 since Wednesday alone.
Around
700 were captured in Jenin, which fell under complete Israeli control
when the last dozen Palestinian fighters defending the camp gave
themselves up late Thursday. Some 30 others had surrendered earlier
after tense night-long negotiations.
Resistance
leader in Jenin, Sheikh Gamal Abul Heiga, confirmed that the refugee
camp fell Wednesday morning in the hands of the Israeli occupation
forces who then publicly executed a large number of Palestinian youth.
Abul
Heiga told IslamOnline that the occupation forces were largely in
control of the refugee camp after eight days of fierce Palestinian
resistance. “The occupation force is currently shooting at the
resistance fighters and publicly executing them,” he added.
Abdel
Salam, a resistance fighter in Jenin, told IslamOnline the Israeli
occupation army bulldozed tens of Palestinian houses and concealed any
evidence of their crimes and atrocities in the camp.
“The
camp is almost completely destroyed and will be extinct in no time,”
Abdel Salam said.
Palestinian
witnesses in Jenin said their dead and injured remain lying in the
streets. For its part, the Palestinian leadership said Israel bore
"full responsibility" for the escalation in the conflict and
accused it of "barbaric murders".
Earlier,
Israeli troops prevented U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian
Refugees (UNRWA) and Red Cross workers entering Jenin camp Tuesday,
saying only that there was "a situation" inside, as new
reports emerged of Israeli violence, BBC’s online news service
reported.
Peter
Hansen, UNRWA's commissioner general, accused the Israeli occupation
army of creating a "hellish battleground" in the midst of
the refugees.
Israel,
meanwhile, expressed regret Thursday over a European parliament vote
calling for suspension of a key pact with the Jewish state and for an
arms embargo. Justice Minister, Meir Sheetrit, branded as
"shameful" the vote Wednesday calling for the EU-Israel
Association Agreement to be suspended.
But
in Washington, the White House, denying a report that Sharon's refusal
to withdraw troops from Palestinian territories had cost him U.S.
support, declared the Israeli prime minister a "man of
peace".
