Islamic militants increase pressure on Arafat

By Ibrahim Barzak

Associated Press

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Hundreds of Hamas supporters clashed with Palestinian riot police outside the home of the group’s leader today in a first sign of resistance to Yasser Arafat’s intensifying crackdown on Islamic militants. A Hamas supporter was killed at the scene, witnesses said.

The Palestinian leader is under growing Israeli and U.S. pressure to rein in the Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups that have sent dozens of suicide bombers to Israel, including four this week. Israel told Arafat he must arrest leading militants quickly or face a resumption of Israeli reprisals.

“This is the last chance (for the Palestinians) to do what they are supposed to do,” said Raanan Gissin, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

President Bush said Arafat must “use everything in his power to prevent further terrorist attacks in Israel,” and the White House expressed skepticism today about Arafat’s efforts to crack down on terrorists.

“The president remains deeply concerned that Palestinian jails that are still built with bars in front with revolving doors at the back,” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.

In Arafat’s boldest move yet against Hamas, the movement’s founder and spiritual leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin was placed under house arrest. Palestinian officers set up checkpoints around his Gaza City home today, clashing on and off for hours with more than 1,500 Hamas supporters.

Arafat’s crackdown was accompanied by a flurry of diplomatic activity today.

Egypt sent its foreign minister, Ahmed Maher, on a new mediation mission. He met with Sharon and was to talk with Arafat later in the day. Also, U.S. envoy Anthony Zinni held separate talks with Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Arafat.

Egypt has shunned high-profile ties with Israel since Sharon, a hard-liner, became Israel’s prime minister in March.

“I cannot say we see eye-to-eye because there are still points of difference,” Maher said following his meetings with the Israelis. “But we agreed on the goal, which is to ensure a Palestinian state living beside an Israeli state in security and cooperation.”

Peres, at a news conference with Maher, said Arafat needed to arrest militants as a matter of urgency.

“Why were we so impatient?” Peres said. “Not because we want to put an ultimatum before the Palestinians, but at this very moment we know there is a warning of some more suicide bombers trying to enter Israel. Another bomb will really make the situation impossible.”

Palestinian security officials said a total of 180 Islamic militants have been rounded up since the arrest sweep began Sunday. Some of the arrests were carried out overnight. In the West Bank town of Nablus, Palestinian police posted officers outside two mosques late Wednesday, checking the ID cards of worshippers against a list of wanted people. No arrests were made at the mosques, but police said they found several pounds of explosives in the Nablus hide-out of a Hamas militant.

Israel has complained that those detained were lower-level activists, and that the planners of attacks are still at large. Peres said Wednesday he told Arafat he should arrest 36 leaders of the militant movements.

U.S. envoys have handed the names to Arafat in recent meetings, Gissin said.

In Gaza City, police told Yassin, the Hamas leader, that he was under house arrest, barred all but his relatives from visiting him and cut his phone lines.

In response, protesters threw stones at police vans and officers on foot and set a police jeep on fire. After daybreak, officers wielding clubs and holding up shields charged forward, sending the crowd running.

Both sides occasionally fired automatic weapons in the air, and witnesses said there was also a brief exchange of fire in which a 21-year-old Hamas supporter, Mohammed Silmi, was killed. His death was confirmed by Palestinian security officials.

“We in Hamas are not going to accept the Palestinian Authority’s arrest campaign and we will not keep silent,” said one of the protesters, Izzedine Abu Ghaya, a 22-year-old student at the Islamic University in Gaza City.

Abdel Aziz Rantisi, one of the Hamas leaders who has gone underground since the start of the arrest sweep, posted a message to the group’s wanted men on a website linked to Hamas, saying they should not turn themselves in to police.

Arafat’s Fatah movement later staged a counter-demonstration in support of the Palestinian leader. A senior Arafat aide, Tayeb Abdel Rahim, told the crowd of several thousand that they must stand up to those trying to “sabotage the decisions of the Palestinian leadership.”

In the Gaza Strip, Palestinian militants fired five mortars at a pair Jewish settlements, damaging houses but causing no injuries, the Israeli army said.

An army official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said soldiers raced to the scene the mortar attack in northern Gaza and came under fire. They returned fire, killing one Palestinian and apprehending a second.

However, the Palestinians said the man who was killed, Taj al-Masri, was a member of the security forces who was on duty at a border post, and that he was shot without provocation.

Arafat’s moves follow two days of Israeli military strikes which Israeli officials said were aimed at forcing him to take tough action against terrorists.

Retaliating for the weekend suicide bombings that killed 25 people in Jerusalem and Haifa, Israeli warplanes targeted Palestinian security and police buildings Monday and Tuesday, and the Israeli Cabinet declared that Arafat’s Palestinian Authority is an “entity that supports terrorism.” Another suicide bomber blew himself up in central Jerusalem on Wednesday, lightly injuring two people.

Each side blames the other for failure to implement earlier truce agreements, aimed at ending violence that has killed 798 people on the Palestinian side and 231 people on the Israeli side since September 2000.

Copyright ©2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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