Israeli Air Raids Target Palestinian Security Forces in Gaza Strip

Israeli helicopter gunships attacked the security forces that underpin the Palestinian Authority on Tuesday, firing dozens of rockets at four Gaza Strip targets just hours after a 10-month-old boy was badly injured in a mortar assault on a Jewish settlement.

Several rockets struck near Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat’s home and offices in Gaza City, Palestinian sources said.

The attacks came after a week of intensifying violence in the conflict that has raged for six months and claimed more than 450 lives.

As Israeli casualties have mounted, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, in office for just a month, has come under increasing pressure to hit the Palestinians hard. This is the second time Sharon has unleashed assaults on the elite Force 17 security guard.

Arafat was in the West Bank city of Ramallah during the air raids and was uninjured. Palestinian Television reported that at least 70 people were hurt in the attacks on sites in Gaza City, Khan Yunis, Rafah and Deir al Balah. At least five of the injured were reported to be in serious condition. Witnesses said panicked civilians ran screaming through the streets during the attacks.

Palestinian officials had no comment on the air raids Tuesday night. But in recent days, various officials have claimed that Sharon’s government falsely accused the Palestinian Authority of masterminding attacks on Israel and of turning its back on peace.

With the violence escalating, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell used telephone diplomacy to broker an agreement between Sharon and Arafat in which senior security officials will meet today or Thursday, Israel Radio reported this morning.

The Israelis have been seeking a resumption of security cooperation, but the Palestinians have said they would resume security contacts only in the context of restarting political negotiations. Powell spoke to both leaders Tuesday night, Israel Radio reported, and the two agreed in principle to the security meeting, but the Palestinians demanded that the U.S. send a representative.

All of the targets hammered in the Tuesday assaults, including a building struck in the West Bank village of Beitunia after the Gaza raid ended, belong to Force 17 or the General Security Services, another of the Palestinian Authority’s myriad security organizations. Sharon’s government has blamed both groups for planning and carrying out bombing and shooting attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians. Israel says Force 17 serves as Arafat’s personal bodyguard, a charge that Palestinian officials have denied in recent days.

“The Palestinian Authority is not taking action to thwart attacks and leaves Israel with no choice but to act consistently and decisively to thwart terrorist attacks,” Sharon’s office said in a statement issued Tuesday night.

An army spokesman, Lt. Col. Olivier Rafowicz, said the targets were chosen “after the barbaric and unbearable attack against the baby today by mortar.”

Israel Radio reported that the baby’s mother was hanging laundry outside her home in the heavily guarded settlement of Atzmona, near Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, when three mortar rounds were fired. About 6,500 Jews live in small settlements scattered across Gaza, which is home to more than 1 million Palestinians. The settlements have come under repeated attack in the last half year.

Settler Zvulun Kalfa told Israel Television that one shell exploded near Leah Yered and her 10-month-old son, Ariel. Yered was slightly injured, as was a man who lives at the settlement. Ariel was badly hurt.

“He had shrapnel all over his body, and one piece had split his brain,” said Meir Moyal, a resident of Atzmona. Moyal told Israel Television that he resuscitated the infant before he was taken to hospital in Beersheba, in southern Israel, where he was reported to be in critical condition, with shrapnel lodged in his head and spine.

A group calling itself Hezbollah-Palestine faxed claims of responsibility for the mortar attack to news agencies, but the army said it believed that the mortar rounds were lobbed from nearby Rafah by elements of Force 17.

Eight days earlier, an infant girl who lived in a Jewish enclave in the West Bank city of Hebron was shot dead, a killing the Israeli army blamed on a Palestinian gunman. On Monday, a 4-year-old Palestinian girl lost an eye during a fierce firefight between Palestinians and troops in the West Bank town of Bethlehem; the fighting erupted after an Israeli soldier was shot dead.

Amid the mayhem, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres planned to hold the first high-level meeting with a Palestinian official since Sharon took office. Peres is in Europe, where he is explaining Israel’s policies to the European Union.

Peres told Israel Television that “the violent actions against us have reached a height that cannot be tolerated.” But he said he will proceed with a meeting with Nabil Shaath, a senior Palestinian negotiator.

Sharon has insisted that security talks between Israel and the Palestinians take place only after attacks on Israelis cease, but Peres, who shares a Nobel Peace Prize with Arafat for the 1993 Oslo peace accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, has objected to that policy.