Rush hour turns deadly in Israel

Associated Press

JERUSALEM – A bus exploded today during rush hour near the northern port city of Haifa, killing at least five and injuring at least 20 others, police and emergency officials said. The office of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said the blast was caused by a bomb.

“I felt a huge blast. I am afraid to say the sight is awful,” Yitzhak Rottman, a taxi driver, told Israel Radio.

The explosion happened close to Kibbutz Yagur, just east of Haifa. Police said they suspected a suicide bomber.

On Tuesday, Palestinians ambushed Israeli troops in the cramped quarters of a West Bank refugee camp, setting off a suicide bomb trap in a narrow alley and firing on soldiers in a courtyard, the military said. At least 13 Israelis were killed, the biggest blow to the army in its West Bank offensive.

Defying U.S. demands that Israel’s 12-day-old campaign wrap up without delay, Sharon vowed “Operation Defensive Shield” will go on until it fulfils its mission – “the destruction of the infrastructure of the terror groups.”

“This is a battle for survival of the Jewish people, for survival of the state of Israel,” Sharon said on Israel TV.

There were signs, however, that U.S. efforts were having an effect. Earlier Tuesday, Israel pulled out of Tulkarem and Qalqiliya, two of six Palestinian towns it has occupied; troops remained in Nablus, Bethlehem, Jenin and Ramallah and several villages.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, due to arrive in Israel late Thursday, said he was optimistic his mission could bring a truce and lead to negotiations. Speaking in Cairo, Powell said he would meet Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as well as Sharon and said the United States was willing to deploy observers to monitor any cease-fire.

“We are going to have to act more quickly,” Powell said, though adding, “I am prepared to stay for some while.”

Powell also called Tuesday for accelerated negotiations to establish a Palestinian state.

For the Bush administration, Powell’s emphasis on Palestinian statehood marks a shift in tactics. For more than a year, the administration has focused on establishing a cease-fire as a condition for deeper peacemaking.

But Powell said all the Arab leaders with whom he has met have underscored the urgency of getting started on an accord. And he said he would deal with Arafat as the representative of the Palestinian people.

Aside from the deaths in Jenin camp, an Israeli soldier was killed Tuesday in the city of Nablus, though the military said it may have been by errant Israeli fire.

The Jenin camp in the northern West Bank, home to more than 13,000 Palestinians, has been the site of the most intense fighting of the Israeli assault, with gunmen inside battling Israeli soldiers for the past week. All but three of Israel’s casualties in the campaign have occurred in the camp.

By Tuesday, several hundred gunmen had been pushed into a small area of the camp, with Israeli helicopter gunships providing heavy cover fire for ground troops, witnesses said.

Camp resident Jamal Abdel Salam, an activist in the Islamic militant Hamas group, said the gunmen told him “they said they prefer death to surrender.”

In the double ambush, one group of soldiers was walking in a narrow alley when the bombs went off, military spokesman Brig. Gen. Ron Kitrey said. One of the blasts was set off by a Palestinian who blew himself up, while the other explosives were wired together, he said, killing several soldiers and bringing a house down on three of them.

Just a few yards away, Israeli soldiers who had entered the courtyard of a house came under heavy fire from Palestinian gunmen on rooftops, and several more soldiers were killed, Kitrey told the Associated Press. The wounded and three bodies were recovered.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel said dozens of bodies of Palestinians were piled in the streets of Jenin camp, and residents were prevented from getting food and water. The Israeli organization complained to the Defense Ministry that the military has committed serious human rights violations in the camp, including the demolition of homes with residents still inside. There was no immediate response from the Defense Ministry.

In Nablus, the West Bank’s largest city, troops took control of the densely populated downtown area, or casbah, after several days of fierce resistance by Palestinian gunmen. At least 41 Palestinians were killed in the fighting there, but the toll was not final because bodies remained in the streets, medics said.

Elsewhere, a standoff at Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity, built over the traditional birthplace of Jesus, entered its second week. More than 200 armed Palestinians have been holed up in the shrine, ringed by Israeli troops. An Israeli army officer said that negotiations were under way, and that one proposal was to have the gunmen surrender to a third party.

Meanwhile, students in the United States who sympathize with Palestinians under siege from Israel rallied, marched and handed out fliers Tuesday on some of the nation’s campuses.

A rally for the Palestinian cause drew about 1,000 supporters and spectators at the University of California, Berkeley, including pro-Israel demonstrators who shouted their disapproval while police kept watch.

At the University of Michigan, about 50 protesters, some with arms tied and mouths gagged, paraded mutely through the Ann Arbor campus. At Ohio State University, about 60 protesters lined a campus sidewalk that faces a busy Columbus thoroughfare and chanted: “Stop the hate. Stop the crime. Help save Palestine.”

At Columbia University in New York, several members of Students for Justice in Palestine manned a card table handing out informational fliers, and at the University of Minnesota, about 75 people turned out to demonstrate.