Barak Gives Arafat Ultimatum

Prime Minister Ehud Barak declared Saturday that Israel is in a fight for its life after Palestinians tore apart a Jewish shrine in the West Bank and violence spread to the northern border, where Lebanese Islamic guerrillas captured three Israeli soldiers.

Barak issued an ultimatum to Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat to end within 48 hours the pitched street battles that have raged for 10 days in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He also warned the governments of Syria and Lebanon that he expects them to secure the release of the soldiers being held by Hezbollah guerrillas.

The rapidly unfolding events on the eve of Judaism’s holiest day, Yom Kippur, left Israelis wondering whether they were heading for all-out war with their Arab neighbors. For the first time, the prime minister, elected in May 1999 on a platform of peacemaking, braced the country for a period of prolonged conflict.

“A new situation is becoming clear. It is a fight for our right to be here and to lead a free existence here,” Barak said on national television. “This will not be an easy struggle. It is likely to last a long time.”

He called for the politically fractious country to close ranks and suggested that he would be willing to form a national unity government if necessary.

Barak spoke as gun battles continued across the West Bank in another day of violence that Israel had hoped to avoid by pulling its troops before dawn from Joseph’s Tomb in the heart of the Palestinian-controlled city of Nablus.

Israel’s military commander in the West Bank, Brig. Gen. Benny Gantz, said the withdrawal was arranged with “the most senior Palestinian officials,” who then failed to keep their end of the deal. One Israeli soldier was shot on the way out of town and, soon afterward, Palestinian gunmen and civilians stormed the site, setting fires and pulling the building apart piece by piece.

Critics accused the government of surrendering territory under fire, but Gantz said the pullback was a tactical one meant to reduce tensions.

The Palestinian celebrations in Nablus, however, appeared to have emboldened Palestinian militias that later opened fire on Jewish settlements in the contested city of Hebron and elsewhere in the West Bank. Late Saturday, Israeli forces were fighting gun battles with the Palestinians and warned residents in Ramallah to quit allowing gunmen to shoot from their homes.

Early this morning, Israel destroyed Palestinian buildings around the Netzarim junction in the Gaza Strip, the site of many clashes between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers, who are guarding a tiny, isolated settlement.

An army announcement said military engineers blew up two apartment buildings, called the Twin Towers, and a third building called the factory because “attacks have escalated in the area in the past few days.”

Palestinian sources in Gaza said the Army fired rockets from helicopters into the apartment towers, blew up the factory, leveled an Israeli-Palestinian liaison office at the site and bulldozed large swaths of land around the Israeli military outpost.

In Washington, President Clinton canceled a political trip to Ohio and Indiana to remain at the White House so he could keep in close contact with the deteriorating situation.

“The president has literally been engaged in Middle East issues all day,” White House spokesman P. J. Crowley said late Saturday. “He talked to Barak three times, Arafat twice, [Egyptian President Hosni] Mubarak once. He has been meeting with his Middle East team throughout the day.”

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright also made a series of telephone calls, and a task force was set up at the State Department to monitor developments around the clock.

Breakthrough Eludes Clinton’s Efforts

Clinton has sought throughout his two terms in office to score major breakthroughs in untangling the Mideast conflict, working with Arafat and a succession of Israeli leaders. With his presidency drawing to a close, he clearly had sought to count substantial progress toward peace in the region as part of his legacy. But the renewed conflict casts doubt on whether he will achieve that.

Barak, in his broadcast remarks, not only called on Arafat to end the violence within 48 hours but said that if the Palestinian leader fails to do so, Israel will have to assume that the “political track” has come to an end.

“Today a picture is developing that there is apparently no peace partner. The truth is painful, but this is the truth, and we must confront it with open eyes,” Barak said.

“Until now, my orders were to exercise restraint, not to initiate but just to react. If we do not see a change in the patterns of violence in the next two days, we will see this as the cessation of the peace talks by Arafat,” he said, adding: “We will instruct the [Israel Defense Forces] and the security forces to use all means at their disposal to stop the violence.”

About 80 people have been killed and more than 1,000 injured--the vast majority of them Palestinians--in the clashes that began Sept. 28 after right-wing Likud Party leader Ariel Sharon made a trip to the most contested holy site in Jerusalem, known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Palestinians as Haram al Sharif.

Palestinian leaders say the violence has been a spontaneous reaction to Sharon’s “provocation,” as well as the result of pent-up frustration over lack of progress in implementing the 7-year-old Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.

Arafat said Saturday that Israel was to blame for a “dangerous escalation against the Palestinian people, the Arab people, the Lebanese people and against Islamic and Christian holy places.”

Israelis See Arafat Behind the Violence

Israelis maintain that the violence has been orchestrated by a Palestinian leadership trying to gain international sympathy and strengthen its position at the bargaining table.

“I see Arafat as the person responsible. If he wishes, with one simple order, he can stop the violence,” Barak insisted.

Several days ago, Israel’s intelligence service warned the political leadership that Arafat was determined to keep the clashes going for as long as it would take to involve the Arab states. The intelligence officials said Arafat felt he needed stronger support from Arab leaders after Clinton blamed him for the failure of the Camp David peace negotiations in July.

Now that the violence has spread to Israel’s northern border with the capture of the three soldiers and the first cross-border attacks since Israel pulled its troops out of southern Lebanon in May, the conflict threatens to mushroom into a regional one.

Early Saturday, hundreds of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon charged the border fence hurling stones at Israeli soldiers, who opened fire in return. One Palestinian was killed, and 14 were wounded.

The three soldiers were captured in what appeared to be a carefully planned and executed Hezbollah ambush. According to Israel TV’s Channel Two, the guerrillas fired Katyusha rockets at an Israeli outpost in the disputed Shaba farms border region. When Israeli troops arrived at the scene in an open truck, guerrillas fired on them and snatched the three soldiers.

Low-flying Israeli helicopters searched the area and fired on suspected guerrilla outposts and roads, wounding a family of four, according to Lebanese security sources.

Six Israeli soldiers were also wounded in the border violence.

“They [the guerrillas] were definitely prepared. You don’t do this on the spur of the moment,” said a U.N. official on the border.

Hezbollah issued a statement dedicating the raid to Rami Durra, the 12-year-old Palestinian boy killed by Israeli gunfire in the Gaza Strip last week. The boy’s terrifying last moments as his father helplessly tried to shield him were captured on video and broadcast around the world.

Hezbollah demanded the release of 19 Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails.

Barak said intense diplomatic efforts were being made to try to win the soldiers’ freedom. He said that in addition to having spoken to Clinton, he was in touch with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

But the grim-faced prime minister said, “We will spare no effort of any kind in order to bring our boys home quickly.”

Deputy Defense Minister Efraim Sneh took an even harder line in several radio and television interviews, saying that the Syrians control Lebanon and will be held responsible for all that happens there.

“It is the role of Syria now to stop the aggression promptly, otherwise Syria is the address for our response,” he said.

Israel occupied a 9-mile-deep band of southern Lebanon for 22 years to try to prevent Palestinian and Hezbollah guerrilla attacks on northern Israel. Having failed to reach a peace agreement with Syria, the de facto ruler of Lebanon, Barak ordered a unilateral pullout in May and said any attacks from Lebanese territory would be answered with direct hits on Syria and Lebanon.

He conducted the withdrawal under growing pressure from Israeli parents who did not want to see their soldier sons dying for the occupation of foreign territory. But the opposition criticized Barak for giving up something for nothing and said the withdrawal had left Israel vulnerable to attacks.

The capture of the Israeli soldiers could rekindle this controversy as well as reopen the wound of the capture of Phantom jet pilot Ron Arad, who was shot down over southern Lebanon during an Israeli bombing mission in 1986.

Arad was captured by Hezbollah and reported alive for many years, but he never reappeared. He became a hero--very nearly the Israeli equivalent of Palestinian martyrs--and the failure to secure his release became a national embarrassment.

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Times staff writer Norman Kempster in Washington contributed to this report.