Israel Sweeps Palestinian Cities

Israeli armor and infantry early today occupied a Palestinian city in the northern Gaza Strip, sealing off all roads and using loudspeakers to call on Islamic militants to surrender, witnesses said.

The takeover of Beit Hanoun followed a string of raids Friday on West Bank villages--Israel’s largest sweep yet to arrest Palestinian suspects--and as warplanes continued to pummel the symbols of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat’s crumbling power.

Eight Palestinians were killed Friday, and at least four were wounded this morning.

Earlier Friday in Washington, President Bush, rejecting advice that the time has come to give up, decided to hang on to a tattered Middle East peace initiative, for the time being.

Bush said retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni will continue his so-far fruitless effort to pressure Arafat to rein in Palestinian terrorists as a first step toward ending 14 1/2 months of violence and establishing a durable cease-fire.

“Chairman Arafat has said that he intends to fight terror . . . and now is his time to perform,” Bush told reporters at the White House. “The world expects Chairman Arafat to lead, and so do I.”

Zinni left Israel on Friday for a trip to Jordan and Egypt, where he planned to urge King Abdullah II and President Hosni Mubarak to add to the pressure on Arafat to stem the violence. Although the State Department said Zinni is expected to return to Jerusalem early next week, one senior official admitted that details of the trip were sketchy because it was not scheduled until late Thursday, after comments by Arafat that U.S. officials interpreted as an indication that he was unwilling to act.

The official, who declined to be identified by name, said that Zinni might return to Washington to consult with officials and spend Christmas with his family, but that he was not abandoning his effort.

Zinni’s job seemed to become pointless after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced Thursday that his government would no longer deal with Arafat even with Zinni acting as a go-between. But in Washington, administration officials said they remained hopeful that Sharon could be enticed to rejoin the peace process.

Envoy Tries to Focus on Small, Specific Steps

Although the Bush administration responded to deadly suicide bombings in downtown Jerusalem almost two weeks ago by muting its criticism of Sharon and dropping its customary call for Israeli restraint, officials said Friday that Washington continues to regard Arafat as the elected leader of the Palestinians.

“We are in touch with both sides. We will remain in touch with both sides,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

Pulling the plug on Zinni’s mission, as some officials and nongovernmental analysts have advocated, would have ended the only ongoing diplomatic effort to prevent the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians from accelerating.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, in announcing Zinni’s appointment last month, said the former general would remain in the region “as long as it takes.” Powell and other top administration officials said Friday that the stakes are too high for the U.S. to walk away from the Middle East.

Since Zinni’s arrival in the region in late November, violence has soared and nearly 100 people have been killed, roughly half of them Israelis slain by gunmen or suicide bombers.

In three “trilateral” sessions brokered by Zinni since his arrival, the special envoy has focused on small, specific steps and not broader issues fundamental to the conflict.

He started with arrests, telling Arafat that it is “not acceptable” to allow terrorist organizations to operate within the Palestinian Authority’s jurisdiction, according to a U.S. official familiar with the talks. Zinni presented the Palestinians with a list of 33 suspects whom Israel wanted arrested, but the U.S. official said it appeared Friday that only a handful had been detained, some under conditions that are not very restrictive.

Zinni then moved on to mortars, urging the Palestinians to dismantle factories in the Gaza Strip used to make shells fired at Jewish settlements. But no apparent progress was made there, either. Zinni concluded that the level of trust between the two sides was “zero” and expressed reservations about where his efforts could go, the U.S. official said.

A basic difficulty was that two main players, the radical Islamic movement Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, were not even sitting at the table, the official said. And Arafat appeared unwilling to risk the bloodshed among Palestinians that a serious crackdown would probably unleash, the official said.

50 Suspects Arrested in Israeli Operation

On the ground, meanwhile, Israel has pressed ahead with its offensive against Arafat. F-16 combat jets bombed Arafat’s compound and a security outpost in Gaza City again Friday, following the firing of three mortar shells by Palestinians. More than a strategic military gain, however, the goal of the operation appeared to be to further erode Arafat’s legitimacy and authority and to humiliate him in the eyes of his people.

Israeli special forces, in tanks backed by helicopters, swept into three Palestinian villages early Friday near the West Bank cities of Nablus and Hebron and conducted house-to-house raids. Six Palestinian police or security officers were killed in the village of Salfit, and two Palestinians described by the Israeli army as terrorists were killed near Hebron.

Israeli officials say that since Arafat won’t make arrests, their forces will.

Brig. Gen. Gershon Yitzhak, Israel’s commander for the West Bank, said Friday’s operation, which netted 50 Palestinians, was the largest sweep for suspects since the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation erupted in September 2000.

Yitzhak, in an interview, said his men came under fire when they entered Salfit. They shot back, killing six, he said. But the mayor of Salfit, Shaher Shtyyeh, said in a telephone interview that two of the dead were killed in their sleep.

All of the six dead and 30 arrested in Salfit were members of the Palestinian Authority’s security services or Arafat’s Fatah movement, Yitzhak said. He said the arrested men were suspected in recent roadway ambushes of Jewish settlers.

In this morning’s raid of Beit Hanoun, a city of about 30,000 people, Israeli troops seemed to be targeting top Hamas military commanders, witnesses said. Armored bulldozers demolished the home of one. An army spokeswoman said five Palestinians had been captured by early morning.

In a notable expression of dissent Friday, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres criticized the military operations that Sharon has launched, as well as the government’s decision to declare Arafat “irrelevant.”

“Arafat is not finished, despite what Sharon contends,” Peres told Israel’s largest newspaper, Yediot Aharonot, in an interview published Friday. And he told another Israeli newspaper, Maariv, “There are military actions that Sharon is taking that make me shudder.”

Peres, who despite his criticism signed off on the Security Cabinet’s decision to cut off relations with Arafat, is a minority voice. Polls of the Israeli public have regularly given Sharon wide backing for his actions.

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Wilkinson reported from Jerusalem and Kempster from Washington.