Sharon Raps Abbas Over Violence

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon delivered a sharp rebuke Monday of the transitional Palestinian government led by Mahmoud Abbas, saying it must do more to stem violence by militant groups.

Sharon spoke a day after assailants from Hamas and a smaller militia group tunneled almost directly below an Israeli army outpost in the southern Gaza Strip and killed five Israeli soldiers with a massive explosion and subsequent gunfire.

“Developments in the region depend on the question of whether or not the Palestinians understand that they must act against terror,” the prime minister said in a statement that mentioned the Gaza attack. “We still do not see any change in the [Palestinian] Authority in this issue.”

At the same time, though, Sharon’s government sent conciliatory signals, promising a troop pullout from Palestinian population centers for a three-day period encompassing Jan. 9 elections to replace the late Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat.

“We will leave the Palestinian cities for a period of about 72 hours,” Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told a security conference in the coastal city of Herzliya, in one of the first concrete pledges of Israeli action meant to facilitate the vote.

“We will do our best not to interfere with the orderly procedure of the election.”

The Palestinians have called on Israel to do more to allow freedom of movement prior to the vote, including an immediate pullback from Palestinian urban centers and the removal of military checkpoints.

Abbas, a former prime minister who is considered the front-runner to replace Arafat, did not condemn Sunday’s blast near Rafah, the main border crossing between Gaza and Egypt. In general, Palestinians do not consider attacks on Israeli troops to be acts of terrorism.

Israel’s army chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, visited the wrecked outpost and accused groups such as Hamas of trying to “torpedo” efforts by the transitional Palestinian leadership to “create a new reality.”

Sunday’s attack represented Israel’s worst one-day loss of troops’ lives in more than six months. Although Israel threatened retaliatory strikes against Hamas and other militant groups, its response thus far has been restrained.

Israeli officials denied knowledge of a bombing Monday in Damascus, the Syrian capital, which is home to Hamas’ main leadership in exile. The militant group blamed Israel for the blast, which it said destroyed a Hamas official’s vehicle. The official was not in the car and escaped serious injury.

Israeli military sources suggested that rather than staging a wide-ranging incursion into crowded refugee camps in Gaza, a tactic that commonly results in Palestinian civilian casualties, the army would concentrate on ways to detect and destroy tunnels, which have been used to great effect for such attacks by militant groups.

The head of Israel’s southern command, Maj. Gen. Dan Harel, acknowledged that Sunday’s blast had caught Israel off guard despite persistent warnings of the likelihood of such an attack. Israeli newspapers were full of commentary Monday describing the tunnel explosion as an operational triumph for Hamas and a major failure for the army.

“In general, it’s complex to obtain intelligence about the tunnels,” Harel told Israel Radio.

In the refugee camps of southern Gaza, Palestinian residents were jumpy and fearful of Israeli strikes.

“We’re afraid of shooting, or of tanks coming,” said 52-year-old Sana Albayed, traveling Monday between Gaza City and her home in the southern Gaza Strip.

Adding to the jittery atmosphere, an explosion tore through the home of a 25-year-old Islamic Jihad activist in the Khan Yunis refugee camp, killing him, hospital officials said.

The Israeli army made no immediate claim of having targeted the man, and Palestinian sources said the blast could have been the result of a so-called work accident -- the premature explosion of a bomb as it was being prepared.

Special correspondent Rushdie abu Alouf in Gaza City contributed to this report.