Powell faces defiant Israel

Israel kept up its sweeping military offensive in the West Bank yesterday despite the arrival of United States Secretary of State Colin Powell on a crucial mission aimed at ending more than 18 months of bloodshed.

In defiance of US demands and international pressure to halt the nearly two-week-old campaign in Palestinian-ruled areas, Israeli tanks and troops maintained a tight grip on most of the West Bank's important cities.

Blindfolded and handcuffed, hundreds of Palestinian men were detained for interrogation by Israeli agents. Israeli officials said that about 4000 Palestinians had been arrested during the fortnight-long invasion. Of these, 120 were on Israel's list of wanted "terrorists", officials said.

Powell flew in from Jordan and was due to hold talks in coming days with both Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who is penned in by Israeli armour besieging his West Bank compound in Ramallah.

Taking an upbeat view, Powell told reporters in Amman: "I have been encouraged by the expressions of support that I have received as I travelled to the region."

Powell has made it explicit that the US views Israel's strategy as misguided. He has sent increasingly understanding messages to the Palestinians in the past few days.

"However long the Israeli incursion continues, the problems will still be there," Powell said during his visit to Jordan. "The violence and anger and frustration which feeds that will still be there unless we find a negotiating process that leads to a Palestinian state."

His relatively tough words were moderated slightly by the White House, whose spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said that the US believed Sharon was committed to peace - a view not shared by Palestinians and questioned by a number of foreign diplomats.

Arab leaders have made no secret of their feeling that the United States has given its chief Middle East ally too much time and free rein to press ahead with the West Bank onslaught.

Powell, adding a higher profile to Washington's reactivated Middle East peacemaking role, will face formidable obstacles in his bid to forge a lasting ceasefire as a first step towards reviving negotiations on a final settlement.

Israeli forces have fought house to house, carried out mass arrests and bombarded cities, towns and refugee camps using tanks and helicopter gunships since launching an offensive they say is intended to root out militants behind a wave of suicide attacks. But the campaign has also taken a heavy toll on the civilian population, especially in the main refugee camp in the northern West Bank city of Jenin.

There, Israeli troops faced bitter resistance until the last major group of about 40 holdouts - exhausted and nearly out of ammunition - surrendered on Thursday.

The press has finally been allowed into Jenin. Homes have been turned into piles of rubble. There are gaping holes in the sides of buildings. Electricity wires are torn down and strewn amid the wreckage. Water floods out of broken mains and runs down the smashed streets.

These are scenes of devastation that will haunt the Powell mission. For out of the misery, humiliation and death of Jenin camp, the Palestinians are already fashioning a legend. Out of the rubble staggered a 13-year-old boy on Thursday.

Amazingly, he was one of the last group of fighters who held out against the helicopters and the tanks. And already the stories are being passed from Palestinian to Palestinian: How the 13-year-old fought because his father was killed fighting the last time Israeli forces moved into the camp in March; how, when they ran out of ammunition, the fighters started throwing stones at the Israeli soldiers.

"I feel very proud of what the fighters did in Jenin," Deya al-Ahmad, a Palestinian in a neighbouring village said yesterday. "I will tell my children this story, and I hope they will tell it to their grandchildren."

The Palestinians salvaged this from a battle in which those detained tell horrific tales of their treatment by the Israelis.

One told us he was forced to strip naked, and act as a human shield, standing with an Israeli soldier behind him resting his gun on his shoulder.

Another told us when he asked for a drink the soldiers forced a stick into his mouth. Then, he said, they brought him water that tasted of urine.

"I don't believe this is a victory for Israel," said Rashid Hassan. "Because a victory would mean that they had achieved their goals and solved their problem once and for all. But I think the problem is going to start again for Israel. If they killed so many people, the next generation will fight even harder."

Among the refugees who fled Jenin camp, we found a teenager who would not give his name. He had been separated from his family and could not find them. He told us he was going to become a suicide bomber.

Captain Sharon Feingold, an Israeli Army spokeswoman, denied allegations of atrocities and said soldiers were doing their utmost to avoid civilian casualties.

Bodies had been left lying in the streets because Palestinian gunmen had refused to hold their fire, she said.

Tanks and troops showed no sign of budging from the West Bank population centres they still hold. They occupy Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin and Bethlehem, where a standoff between soldiers and armed Palestinians continued at the Church of the Nativity.

The latest Israeli-Palestinian blood-letting has raised fears the violence could spread across the region and beyond.

A truck filled with cooking gas exploded near a Jewish shrine on the Tunisian resort island of Djerba, killing six people, including four German tourists, witnesses said.

The Tunisian Government struggled to dispel suspicions the explosion at the ancient El Ghriba synagogue was a suicide bombing prompted by Arab anger at Israel's West Bank offensive.

An Israeli Foreign Ministry official said the blast appeared to be a "deliberate terrorist attack" and not an accident, as Tunisian authorities maintained.

- INDEPENDENT and REUTERS

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