Israelis invade Gaza refugee camp and Ramallah in West Bank

By Ibrahim Barzak

Associated Press

JEBALIYA REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza Strip – Israel intensified its offensive against Palestinian militants – the largest military operation in 20 years – killing 28 Palestinians in raids Tuesday on refugee camps and other targets. Seven Israeli motorists were killed in shooting attacks.

Six of the Israelis were killed when up to five gunmen opened fire on cars near Kibbutz Metsuba, a communal farm near the border with Lebanon. Israeli troops killed two gunman, and Israeli television said later that a third was caught. Police initially said the gunmen crossed from Lebanon, but the army later said there was no sign of an incursion across the border.

The shootings were apparently in retaliation for Israel’s offensive, launched last week after a series of deadly attacks on Israeli civilians.

Israeli security sources said Tuesday that most combat soldiers in Israel’s standing army and some reserve troops – a force of many thousands – were deployed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the largest-scale operation since Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon. In the West Bank town of Ramallah alone, dozens of tanks were patrolling the streets.

Deputy Defense Minister Dalia Rabin-Pelossof, a moderate and daughter of late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, said she expected the strikes to be halted by the time U.S. envoy Anthony Zinni arrives in the region Thursday. Two previous truce missions by Zinni were scuttled by violence.

As the fighting raged, two Cabinet ministers from the ultra-nationalist National Union party submitted their resignation, saying they felt Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s actions against the Palestinian Authority were not tough enough. Sharon retains a solid parliamentary majority – 75 out of 120 seats – despite the protest.

On Monday evening, about 50,000 Israelis demonstrated in Tel Aviv, calling for stiffer action against the Palestinians. “Defeat Arafat, destroy terror,” banners read.

In Tuesday’s fighting, the Jebaliya refugee camp – the largest, with 100,000 residents, and a stronghold of the Islamic militant group Hamas – came under heavy Israeli fire from tanks and helicopter gunships during a three-hour incursion. The camp was plunged in darkness when Israeli fire struck a transformer.

Hundreds of Palestinian gunmen exchanged fire with Israeli forces, and at least 18 Palestinians were killed and 75 wounded by Israeli fire, doctors said. Many civilians, some in their pajamas, fled the fighting, moving toward nearby Gaza City on foot and in donkey carts. “They are killing us,” said Laila Ayoub, 38, carrying a baby girl in her arms. “They used helicopters to fire on us while we were leaving.”

Israeli government spokesman Dore Gold said Israel was showing restraint and “not using the full strength of its air force against the refugee camps.”

Israeli tanks also took control of Ramallah and the adjacent Amari refugee camp, where fierce gunbattles were reported. Five Palestinians, including two policemen, two unarmed guards at the parliament building and a taxi driver, were killed by Israeli fire, doctors said.

Several tanks were deployed outside the headquarters of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. The takeover came only a day after Sharon announced that Arafat, who had been confined to Ramallah for the past three months by Israel, was free to move in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

In an angry response, a senior Arafat adviser, Ahmed Abdel Rahman, said Tuesday that “talking peace with the Israelis was a historic mistake.” Abdel Rahman said he was confined to his home because of heavy Israeli tank fire.

Israeli troops announced over loudspeakers that boys and men between the ages of 16 and 40 must come out of their homes and surrender to Israeli forces in Ramallah. Local TV stations urged the men not to comply.

Over the weekend, Israeli forces up rounded up nearly 2,000 Palestinians in sweeps of three other West Bank locations, in hopes of tracking down suspected militants. In the Tulkarem refugee camp, troops wrote numbers on the foreheads and forearms of several detainees for identification.

Arafat equated the action with the treatment of Jews in Nazi concentration camps during World War II, when numbers were tattooed on the arms of prisoners as a means of identification.

“Isn’t this the sort of thing they used to say the Nazis did against the Jews?” Arafat said of the numbers written on the Palestinians, speaking Monday on Abu Dhabi Television. “So what do they say about these things? Isn’t this a new Nazi racism?”

Army officials rejected Arafat’s accusation, saying it was aimed at stirring up passions and encouraging his followers to carry out more attacks. The army chief said Tuesday he ordered the practice stopped.

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said Tuesday that “we have to be careful not to humiliate (people), not to treat human beings with contempt,” adding that he believed Arafat felt humiliated by the Israeli actions.

Israel’s offensive began last week, after a string of attacks by Palestinian militants on Israeli civilians. Since the beginning of March, 159 Palestinians and 58 Israelis have been killed, making it the bloodiest period since fighting broke out in September 2000.

In Tuesday’s shooting in northern Israel, helicopters fired in to the hills after the gunmen started shooting cars. Security forces battled the attackers for more than hour and were still pursuing any fugitive attackers. Another shooting in the West Bank left a motorist dead.

Israel’s incursion into Jebaliya ended before dawn Tuesday. The Israeli military said it was aimed at finding rockets, destroying weapons factories and arresting suspected terrorists.

Palestinians huddled in terror in cinderblock hovels or fled into the darkness as Israeli tanks rumbled into the Gaza Strip’s biggest and most crowded refugee camp.

A Hamas leader, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, threatened bloody revenge. “We have no choice but to kill the occupier, to kill him everywhere, every village and every city. There’s no other way to defend ourselves,” he said.

In the camp, troops destroyed four buildings, including two metal workshops and the home of Ibrahim Hassouna, a member of the Al Aqsa Brigades militia who killed three Israelis in a shooting attack on a Tel Aviv restaurant last week before being killed by police. The army said the metal workshops produced mortar shells.

Elsewhere in the Gaza Strip, Israeli helicopters shelled a metal workshop and a Palestinian security installation in the Khan Yunis refugee camp, killing four Palestinian civilians, including three members of a family.

In the Deir el Balah refugee camp, Israeli gunboats and helicopters shelled a Palestinian security installation, killing a policeman.