Israel retaliates against murder of soldiers in West Bank

8:00 AM - By CHRISTINE HAUSER

GAZA - Israeli helicopter gunships blasted targets near Yasser Arafat's offices in two Palestinian-ruled cities on Thursday after an angry mob killed at least two captive Israeli soldiers.

Israeli leaders called the raids a limited response to a "hideous crime" and said the operation had been completed. Palestinians described the attacks as all-out war.

Israelis and Palestinians said the spiraling violence could deal a mortal blow to Middle East peace efforts, as world statesmen urged both sides to stop fighting and start talking.

Helicopters hit targets near the Palestinian president's headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah and in Gaza City hours after youths stabbed the soldiers to death in ugly scenes in Ramallah.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak said Israel could not let what he called the lynching of the soldiers go unanswered. Deputy Prime Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer later said a third Israeli soldier may have been captured and killed.

"The action today is a warning signal to the Palestinian Authority that it not misinterpret Israel's restraint and desire for security and peace," Barak said in a statement.

Arafat, who was unhurt, responded defiantly, saying on a visit to wounded people in Gaza's Shifa hospital that the Palestinian people would remain strong and "continue their march to Jerusalem, the capital of the Palestinian independent state."

"There's no doubt that the peace process in its present form... doesn't appear to have a chance and if we want to revive the process, it will have to be revived with other tools," Israel's acting Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami declared.

But he said negotiations were ultimately the only option.

"In the end even if we go into a confrontation, however deep and hard it may be, we all understand that there will be no choice but to return to the negotiating table," he said.

Israel said it had given Palestinians three hours' warning to evacuate targeted buildings in Gaza and Ramallah.

An official of the Islamist Hamas movement said Palestinian guards had abandoned prisons in Gaza, allowing jailed Hamas militants and common criminals to escape.

Hamas's spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, vowed revenge for the Israeli attacks. "We will spare no effort to retaliate for this aggression," he told Reuters. "All options are open for the Palestinian people to defend themselves."

An Israeli army spokesman, Colonel Raanan Gissin, said the mob had mutilated the two soldiers in a "hideous crime."

"What happened today was something that required an immediate and very severe response and that is why we used the helicopter gunships...to attack those targets, to send a very clear message to Mr. Arafat and the leaders of the Palestinian Authority -- don't mess with us," he said.

Palestinian hospitals said 17 people were wounded in the reprisal raids, the toughest Israeli military operation since clashes broke out 15 days ago.

At least 97 people have been killed, all but seven of them Palestinians or Israeli Arabs, since violence erupted on September 28 after Israeli right-wing politician Ariel Sharon visited a Jerusalem shrine holy to Muslims and Jews.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright urged both sides to stop fighting immediately and resume negotiations. "We are in a very sad and difficult period," she said in Washington.

"We are gravely concerned that incidents of this kind can easily escalate into something even more dangerous," U.S. National Security Council spokesman P.J. Crowley said.

Crowley said Clinton had spoken to Arafat, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and British Prime Minister Tony Blair about the latest violence, and was expected to speak shortly with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

Plumes of black smoke curled into the sky in Ramallah, where a radio transmission site near Arafat's office, a police station and a security headquarters were hit. The raid interrupted power supplies for 18,000 people in Ramallah, witnesses said.

An army communique said the two Israeli reservists were killed in cold blood after getting lost in Ramallah on their way to base and being taken into Palestinian police custody.

"This (helicopter) action is a token signal to the Palestinian Authority leadership that the Israeli army will not sit idly by when acts of violence are committed," it said.

Danny Yatom, an aide to Barak, said: "The main aim was to give (Arafat) a warning signal that the rules of the game... have changed completely following the lynching in Ramallah."

Palestinian officials accused Israel of unleashing full-scale war and appealed for international intervention.

Peace negotiator Saeb Erekat said: "What we are witnessing is an all-out war against the Palestinian people. We call upon the international community for immediate intervention."

The welter of violence overshadowed world efforts led by Kofi Annan to calm the crisis. He cut short a visit to Lebanon and flew back to Israel.

Annan, who had gone to Beirut to discuss the fate of three Israeli soldiers captured by Hizbollah guerrillas on the Lebanese border on Saturday, said he hoped peacemaking would survive the latest shock.

"While it complicates it, I hope it doesn't mean that we will not be able to find our way out of this difficult and messy situation," he said.

- REUTERS

Herald Online feature: Middle East