Israel Imposes Clampdown on West Bank, Gaza

Cracking down on Hamas, Israeli soldiers locked Palestinians into the West Bank and Gaza Strip on Tuesday, sealed the family homes of eight alleged bombers and arrested scores of their relatives and opponents of the peace process.

As 10 of the victims of Monday’s suicide bombing in Tel Aviv were buried, the Israeli government dismissed the latest Hamas offer for a cease-fire.

The Islamic extremist group’s Iziddin al-Qassam military wing issued a leaflet saying it would halt the terror campaign that has taken at least 61 lives in just over a week if Israel would agree not to attack its activists. It was the third cease-fire offer since the bombing campaign began Feb. 25.

“Their actions speak louder than their leaflets,” said Israeli government spokesman Uri Dromi. “Obviously this is a bluff, a way they always use to try to avoid reprisals.”

Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres has declared war on Hamas in response to the bombings in Jerusalem, Ashkelon and Tel Aviv and has given a free hand to Israeli security forces to try to break the militant group.

Shortly after the Tel Aviv blast that killed the bomber and 13 others, the army set up roadblocks to prevent Palestinians from entering Israel. Soldiers sealed off 465 Palestinian towns and villages on Tuesday in a West Bank deployment unlike any since Israeli troops began withdrawing from the area in October under the peace accord.

Curfews were imposed on five villages and Al Fawar refugee camp near Hebron, home to at least two of the recent suicide bombers. Israeli troops conducted house-to-house searches and made several arrests there.

The army also shut down six colleges and charitable organizations that are alleged Hamas strongholds in Hebron and Abu Dis, near East Jerusalem. The government accused the institutions of incitement, indoctrination and transferring money to Hamas.

Extending their pressure to Israelis, security officials arrested at least three Israeli citizens for harboring Palestinian workers or trying to sneak them into Israel for work.

In Netanya, a coastal city about 15 miles north of Tel Aviv, Shai Nathan was sentenced to three months in jail and three months of community service after police discovered a 56-year-old Arab employee sleeping in Nathan’s bakery. The man turned out to be the father of Rayid Sharnobi, the bomber who killed himself and 18 other people in Jerusalem on Sunday.

Israeli bus companies were told that they would be sanctioned if caught transporting Palestinians into Israel.

Maj. Gen. Ilan Biran, commander of the army’s central front, said soldiers planned to demolish the homes of six suicide bombers as well as that of Hamas bomb maker Yehiya Ayash, known as “the Engineer,” who was assassinated Jan. 5 in an undercover operation believed to have been carried out by Israel. The East Jerusalem home of Ayash’s alleged successor, Mohiedin Sharif, also was sealed and slated for demolition.

Hamas originally said its suicide bombing campaign was in retribution for Ayash’s slaying. The group then said Monday’s Tel Aviv bombing was a response to Peres’ declaration of war on Sunday.

Relatives of Ayash said Israeli soldiers arrested his father, two brothers and two uncles.

“I want to stress that every family of a suicide attacker must know this: Their homes will be destroyed and every aspect of their lives will be severely affected,” Biran said. “We have decided to fight until we destroy Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine,” he said, naming groups that have rejected the 1993 Israeli-Palestinian peace accord. “This is a long, hard, complex and dangerous process, and we are determined to succeed at it.”

Several political analysts questioned how the government will be able to crush the Islamic opposition now, when it failed to do so while it occupied the entire West Bank.

The general said 1.2 million Palestinians had been locked into their towns and villages and prevented from moving between villages or from traveling to jobs in Israel.

Biran said he believed that the suicide bomber who carried out the Tel Aviv attack had come from the Gaza Strip, which is under Palestinian rule. But he also said he was receiving cooperation from Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and his security forces in the crackdown, including intelligence.

Palestinian officials said they had detained 150 Hamas suspects in the West Bank and 400 in the Gaza Strip since the rash of bombings began. Israeli television reported that Arafat had told Israeli officials that his forces had caught a man believed to be responsible for bringing money to Hamas inside Palestinian territory from Jordan.

A Jerusalem radio station, meanwhile, quoted security sources as saying that the explosives used in the recent bombings appeared to have originated with the Israeli army. According to the report, they are believed to have been stolen from army bunkers during Persian Gulf War air raids, when soldiers and civilians dropped what they were doing and ran for bunkers protected against chemical weapons.

Sophisticated bomb-detecting devices sent by President Clinton to help combat the suicide attacks arrived in Israel today. Clinton said Hamas “must not succeed” in sabotaging the Middle East peace process.

Clinton administration officials in Washington said the EGIS 3000 detection devices, manufactured by Thermedics Inc. of Woburn, Mass., and dispatched to Israel on an Air Force C-141, were culled from U.S. government stocks. The model was selected because it could be sent quickly and have an immediate impact on Israel’s ability to protect itself, the officials said.

According to the manufacturer, the device measures air and scans surfaces to locate traces of chemicals that signal the presence of most explosive materials. U.S. officials said that the technology, developed within the past 10 years, is sensitive enough to locate a bomb taped to the body of a suicide bomber.

White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said that the devices could be especially valuable at Israeli checkpoints between Israel and the Palestinian self-governing territories in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

A senior administration official said that Washington offered the bomb-detection equipment to Israel late last year but that the two governments were unable to agree on how much Israel’s regular aid program would be cut to offset the cost of the equipment.

McCurry said the financing question is still not resolved.

Clinton also sent U.S. technicians to assist the security agencies of Israel and the Palestinian Authority in combating the wave of terrorist bombings. The counter-terrorism experts’ primary goal will be to try to overcome generations of hostility and suspicion between Israelis and Palestinians and get the organizations working cooperatively against Hamas.

Meanwhile in Israel, Peres is fighting not only to save the peace accord but also for his political life. He has called early elections for May 29 and must show decisive action against Hamas if he is to stand a chance of winning.

Early in the day, Israeli radio said Peres did not rule out the possibility of forming a national-unity government and postponing elections, but the talk faded throughout the day.

Fearing a serious military strike by Israel, hospitals in the Gaza Strip and West Bank entered a state of alert, according to Israeli television. Officials there believed that the complete closure imposed on the territories was a warning by Israel to the Palestinian Authority that a strike was imminent.

For the moment, at least, Israel appeared to be concentrating on arrests and intelligence-gathering.

“One thing leads to another,” said government spokesman Dromi. “First you gather intelligence, and then you have a military response.”

Times staff writers Norman Kempster in Washington and Robin Wright in La Paz, Bolivia, contributed to this report.

* HAMAS’ MONEY: Officials claim success in cutting off fund-raising in U.S. A7

* RELATED STORIES: A6