http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34697-2001Dec12.html

Sharon Severs Ties To Arafat After Bus Attack
Killing of 10 in West Bank Brings Israeli Retaliation

By Lee Hockstader
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, December 13, 2001; Page A01

JERUSALEM, Dec. 13 (Thursday) -- Palestinians staged a coordinated ambush on an Israeli bus and several other vehicles on the West Bank on Wednesday night, killing at least 10 Israelis and injuring more than 30. Israeli warplanes swiftly retaliated, and Israel announced early today that it was terminating all contacts with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

The roadside bombing and shooting attack against the bus were among the bloodiest incidents in nearly 15 months of violence between Israelis and Palestinians. Combined with Israel's reprisal with U.S.-supplied F-16 fighter jets, the attacks delivered another devastating blow to a U.S. mediation mission led by retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony C. Zinni designed to shepherd Israelis and Palestinians toward a cease-fire.

After a meeting in Tel Aviv that lasted into the early morning hours today, the security cabinet of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced that Arafat was "directly responsible" for the attacks "and therefore is no longer relevant to Israel, and Israel will no longer have any connection with him." Israel's contacts with Arafat had diminished recently as violence intensified, but the announcement could further disrupt attempts to establish a cease-fire.

After the cabinet meeting, officials said Israel was preparing for tougher military action, adding that the attacks intensified the already considerable pressure to topple Arafat and his Palestinian Authority. This morning, Israeli tanks entered Palestinian territory in the southern Gaza strip and helicopters fired missiles at Arafat's Ramallah headquarters. Arafat had been in the building only a short while before, Palestinian officials said.

The cabinet also said Israeli forces would be deployed around Palestinian towns to make arrests and confiscate weapons. At a news conference, Brig. Gen. Dan Harel, Israel's chief of military operations, said Arafat himself was not a target.

Zinni's mission, which began Nov. 26, has generated intense press attention in recent days as he shuttled back and forth between senior Israeli and Palestinian leaders and convened meetings among security chiefs from both sides. But to many here, Zinni's attempts at mediation have seemed disconnected from actual events, which for months have followed their own momentum in a pattern of attack, reprisal and revenge.

Israeli television interrupted regular programming Wednesday to broadcast live images that have become routine -- corpses sprawled under thrown blankets; ambulances, their sirens wailing, racing up to hospitals; medics wheeling the wounded into emergency rooms, and army flares illuminating a barren landscape as soldiers mounted a manhunt for gunmen thought to have fled.

The roadside ambush triggered insistent new demands by Israelis urging the government to eliminate Arafat and his Palestinian Authority. "He is Satan incarnate," Benny Kashriel, chairman of the main council of Jewish settlers, told Israeli television. "In war we must act as in war: We must get rid of Arafat and we must dismantle the Palestinian Authority."

The Islamic Resistance Movement, known as Hamas, which has conducted repeated terror attacks inside Israel, took responsibility for the attack. The group said the ambush was in retaliation for recent Israeli attacks on Palestinian towns and villages, which have caused numerous casualties. Four Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza early Wednesday.

Israeli security officials said three Palestinians identified by Israeli security services as those who carried out the ambush were named on a wanted list handed over to Arafat's intelligence services and to Zinni last week, but none was arrested.

The Palestinian Authority issued a statement, read on Palestinian radio, condemning the ambush, declaring Hamas and another militant group, Islamic Jihad, to be "outlaw organizations" and ordering the closure of all offices affiliated with the two groups. Hamas in particular has a large and relatively efficient network of social, political, educational, health and charitable offices; the announcement suggested all would be shut.

In the past, Arafat has ordered the arrest of Islamic militants, but despite Israel's repeated demands, he has refused in recent years to shut down Hamas's social and political infrastructure, which contributes to its considerable popularity. If his order is carried out, it would likely put him on a collision course with the group, whose support is at least equal to his own.

Within an hour of the bus ambush around 6 p.m., Sharon convened his top ministers in an emergency meeting to plan Israel's response. Israeli F-16 warplanes were soon screaming over cities in the West Bank and Gaza. At least five large explosions shook Arafat's main compound in Gaza City, which houses a complex of security and other buildings. The explosions ignited a fire in the compound and blew out windows in an adjacent residential neighborhood.

Arafat was not in the compound.

The Israeli planes also struck a Palestinian naval headquarters in the northern Gaza Strip and a radar installation at the Palestinian airport farther south, as well as what an army spokeswoman described as a munitions workshop in the northern West Bank city of Nablus.

Nablus, which is administered by the Palestinian Authority, lies about eight miles from the site of the ambush. Palestinian radio reported tonight that dozens of Israeli tanks were rumbling toward the city.

Palestinians were braced for the Israeli reprisals, and government and security offices were evacuated at the time of the airstrikes. At about the same time the bus was ambushed, a pair of Palestinian suicide bombers blew themselves up in an Israeli-occupied area of the Gaza Strip, slightly injuring four Jews.

The violence Wednesday and today came in the face of a request on Tuesday by Zinni that both sides refrain from attacks for 48 hours. He issued a statement Wednesday night condemning "this evil attack" and insisting that the Palestinian Authority "must act against these groups and they must act now."

The two sides had agreed to the truce Tuesday, but their agreement had no discernible effect. The four Palestinians were killed before dawn Wednesday by Israeli helicopter gunships firing missiles in the southern Gaza Strip in retaliation for mortar fire directed at nearby Jewish settlements.

The Israeli press has reported that the security meetings Zinni brokered have erupted into shouting matches as each side accused the other of provoking further violence. On Sunday, Zinni stormed out of one such trilateral security meeting, leaving some participants with the impression that he intended to leave the country within 48 hours unless there was progress. There was none, but Zinni stayed.

The ambush on the bus took place on a small access road a few hundred yards from the entrance of Immanuel, a hilltop settlement of about 3,200 devoutly religious Jews, known here as haredim, or those who "tremble before God." It is an isolated and lonely place, set midway between two Palestinian cities in the northern West Bank, Nablus and Qalqilyah, and surrounded by several dozen Palestinian villages.

Israeli officials said at least three Palestinian gunmen lay in wait for the bus, on which about 45 Jewish settlers were riding on a route that originated near Tel Aviv. As the bus passed, they detonated two roadside charges, then tossed grenades and raked the bus and civilian cars behind it with assault weapons. The bus, which was not armor-plated, continued to roll for about 200 yards despite very heavy damage. The assailants then fired at passengers attempting to flee.

A gun battle ensued when Israeli medics, soldiers and police officers arrived a few minutes later to evacuate the wounded. One of the Palestinians, firing an M-16 assault rifle from a hill, was run down and killed by an Israeli military vehicle. Two other gunmen are believed to have escaped.

Four people in the bus were killed. Medics, ambulance drivers, soldiers and other vehicles came under fire when they arrived on the scene, and a number of them were hit, some mortally. Among the other dead was one Israeli reserve soldier and one border policeman.

"When we got there, they shot at us," Yaacov Rosenblitz, a volunteer Israeli ambulance driver, said on Israeli television. He was lying in a hospital bed, his shirt spattered with blood. "I rushed to the ambulance and we evacuated the injured. But on the way [to the hospital] it turned out I had been injured too."

© 2001 The Washington Post Company