Violence spreads into Israel

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Violence spreads into Israel

October 2, 2000

BY LEE HOCKSTADER

JERUSALEM--Israeli attack helicopters and anti-tank missiles pounded Palestinian rioters in a vain attempt to extinguish a three-day explosion of violence that spread Sunday from the West Bank and Gaza Strip to towns and cities inside Israel.

Israeli tanks rumbled to the outskirts of the West Bank city of Nablus, where Israeli troops were besieged by Palestinian gunmen inside Joseph's Tomb, traditional burial place of the biblical patriarch. Elsewhere, thousands of Palestinians continued to bombard Israeli positions with rocks and Molotov cocktails and trade automatic weapons fire with Israeli forces.

At least 12 Palestinians died Sunday, bringing to more than 30 the number killed since Friday, when clashes erupted after right-wing Israeli politician Ariel Sharon visited a site sacred to Muslims and Jews in east Jerusalem on Thursday.

An Israeli soldier bled to death in Nablus while troops tried to clear an evacuation route through mobs of Palestinian rioters and gunmen. More than 200 people have been wounded in the long, bloody holiday weekend marking Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year.

Sharon, the portly old warrior, was characteristically defiant.

"This has nothing to do with me," the former general said in a long telephone interview from his farm in Israel's Negev Desert, where he spent the weekend watching Palestinian rioters do battle with Israeli forces on television. "It's the result of a preplanned campaign by [Palestinian leader Yasser] Arafat."

The Middle East peace process has survived successive waves of violence, terror and unrest since it began in 1993, but there was growing concern here that the scale of fighting and casualties could derail negotiations at a critical juncture.

"We're starting to ask if the Palestinians want peace," said Maj. Gen. Ytzak Eitan, commander of Israeli forces in the West Bank.

A top Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said he was not certain whether conclusive peace talks could resume while the fighting raged. Arafat has not commented.

The rioting and crossfire seemed to spread everywhere Sunday, including Arab towns and cities within Israel. Israeli forces and Palestinian police and gunmen traded fire in nearly every major West Bank town and city.

The violence raged, and even intensified, despite urgent entreaties to Arafat by Prime Minister Ehud Barak and other Israeli officials. They spent much of Saturday evening telephoning President Clinton and other senior American and European officials, urging them to press Arafat to end the fighting.

Top Israeli security officials and army commanders met with Palestinian officials in the West Bank city of Ramallah early Sunday morning. By dawn, the Israelis said, they thought they had made progress.

But as Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank buried their dead from Saturday's clashes, their fury and frustration seemed to feed on itself. By noon, the streets had erupted anew throughout the territories.

Many said they were waging a holy war for Jerusalem and for the right to establish an independent Palestinian state.

Danny Yatom, Barak's top security aide, said he feared that events could spin further out of control, prompting the use of heavier weapons in Israel's formidable arsenal. "We don't want to do it," he said in an interview. "But if the situation will deteriorate, God knows what will be the result."

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/meast02.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), October 02, 2000


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