Suspected Hamas Activists Detained : Israel: Crackdown targets radical Palestinian faction that has claimed responsibility for two recent suicide bombings.

In a campaign to neutralize the Islamic fundamentalist threat in Israel, authorities have arrested dozens of suspected activists of the radical Palestinian faction Hamas in a continuing sweep of the occupied territories.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin also demanded that neighboring Jordan crack down on Hamas, which has claimed responsibility for killing 12 Israelis in two suicide bombings on buses in the last week.

But Jordan on Friday rejected Israel’s request to close the group’s office in Amman.

Rabin asserted in unusually harsh language that Hamas was using its headquarters in the Jordanian capital for logistic support to armed activists in the Israeli-occupied territories, as well as a propaganda tool. He said Israel “very gravely” views what he called Amman’s role as “a paradise for Hamas activity.”

But a Jordanian official called Rabin’s statement “rash, baseless and not conducive to the peace process.”

Rabin refused to rule out military action to stop Hamas activities in Jordan, a nation that borders the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, a key mover behind Israel’s peace process with Jordan who joined Rabin in the hastily arranged Thursday night news conference, attempted a more diplomatic line.

“The call was made not out of ridicule for Jordan and its relations with Israel,” Peres said. “But there is not one instance in foreign relations in which a country that is striving for peace will allow in broad daylight a representative of a murderous organization to appear and say his organization carried out the murder and that they intend to carry out three more.”

In leaflets, Hamas on Friday repeated its vow to continue attacks against Israel. Mohammed Nazzal, the group’s spokesman in Jordan, also took responsibility on behalf of Hamas for a suicide bombing Wednesday in the northern Israeli town of Hadera and a similar attack in the Israeli town of Afula about 35 miles to the north.

The Islamic group called on all Arabs to avoid traveling on Israeli buses and “to stay away from places where many Israelis gather” in coming days “so they will not be hit in our upcoming operations.”

Arab women who lived in Israel were killed in each of the two suicide bombings.

At the same time Rabin and Peres were confronting Jordan--which Rabin said had ignored Jerusalem’s private requests for action for 10 days--Israeli army and intelligence units were moving to arrest suspected Hamas members in raids from the Gaza Strip to the northern West Bank villages where the suicide bombers lived.

At least four youths were arrested Friday in Yabad, the sleepy mountainside village that was the home of Ammar Amarneh. He blew himself up along with five Israelis on a packed commuter bus in Hadera, Israeli authorities say.

More than a dozen other suspects were picked up in the nearby village of Kabatiya, which was home to Ra’ed Zakarneh, who, Israeli authorities say, drove a car packed with 350 pounds of explosives, propane tanks and nails into a commuter bus as it picked up children in Afula on April 6.

In all, Palestinian sources said Israeli authorities arrested more than 70 suspected Hamas activists in the last several days--more than half in Gaza and the remainder from the West Bank, particularly in the occupied villages closest to sovereign Israel.

Both Israeli towns where the suicide bombings took place are near those West Bank villages, across the “Green Line” separating sovereign Israel from the territories. Both Palestinian villages are near the Jordanian border to the east.

Besides the several dozen suspected Hamas members arrested in the villages of the northern West Bank, the Israeli army has also detained without explanation Mohammed Abdullah Nassar, Ra’ed Zakarneh’s father. He has said in several recent interviews that he is a taxi driver with no political affiliation.

The arrests came after Israeli negotiators--who are attempting to complete an agreement on implementing a peace plan for Palestinian autonomy, beginning in Gaza and the West Bank town of Jericho--said this week that they would never agree to Palestine Liberation Organization demands that Israel release Hamas prisoners, along with those from other Palestinian factions.

The PLO will attempt to govern all Palestinians when it assumes self-rule under a final agreement, which negotiators will again begin discussing in Cairo on Sunday.

Meantime, diplomatic efforts were under way late Friday to defuse growing tension between Israel and Lebanon after rocket attacks on northern Israel by the Islamic group Hezbollah, based in southern Lebanon.

No one was injured in the rocket barrage, which came after the South Lebanon Army, Israel’s surrogate in its 440-square-mile “security zone,” shelled the southern Lebanese port city of Sidon. The artillery attack was in apparent retaliation for a Hezbollah roadside bombing that left three SLA soldiers dead and five more injured earlier in the day.

Most residents of northern Israeli villages spent the day in bomb shelters for the first time since a fierce exchange of rockets, artillery and air strikes eight months ago that Israel dubbed Operation Accountability.