Israelis, Palestinians Talking Less of Peace Than Retaliation

Israel warned Friday that it will retaliate swiftly and harshly against every Palestinian attack on its soldiers and civilians, as gun battles raged in the West Bank and Palestinians accused the Jewish state of detonating a car bomb that killed an Islamic militant.

The cease-fire brokered a month ago by the Bush administration seemed to be collapsing in the face of intensifying violence and increasingly strident talk of an all-out confrontation.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, returning from a visit to Italy, discussed the deteriorating situation with Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer at the airport Friday afternoon. In an interview with Israel Television on his flight back, Sharon said restraint remained his government’s “strategic choice” for the moment.

But in defending Israel’s incursions Thursday night into Palestinian-held West Bank territory with tanks and armored personnel carriers, Ben-Eliezer indicated that the government’s self-declared policy of restraint was over.

“We have just indicated to our friends the Palestinians that no one could expect from us to continue to keep quiet, to take our kids every day to funerals and to say thank you,” Ben-Eliezer said in an interview broadcast Friday night on Israel Radio. “No, this era has ended.”

Although Israel remains committed to observing a cease-fire, Ben-Eliezer said, “the reality is, there is no cease-fire. We put tons of obstacles on our shoulders, and the other side feels himself free to do whatever he wants.”

Two militants with the Islamic movement Hamas were killed Friday, one in the Gaza Strip by Israeli soldiers and the other in the West Bank town of Tulkarm. The army said the first man was shot by soldiers as he threw a grenade at them.

The army said it knew nothing of the death of the second man, 27-year-old Fawaz Badran, whose car exploded as it was parked outside his electronics shop.

Israel has claimed responsibility for “targeted killings” of militants several times since fighting erupted with the Palestinians last September, arguing that it is killing either men who are en route to carrying out attacks on Israelis or “those who send them.” The slayings have been denounced by Palestinians, human rights groups and the United States as extra-judicial killings.

Sharon is being pressured by settlers frightened by daily attacks from Palestinian gunmen and by right-wing members of his Cabinet who are calling on him to go to war. He has authorized the army to carry out operations in Palestinian-controlled territory in the last few days. At the same time, he sent his son, Omri, to meet with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Thursday night.

“I clarified the need to stop terror,” Sharon said of the message he sent with his son. Since his election in February, the prime minister has refused to meet with Arafat.

But if Omri Sharon’s visit was an attempt to start a dialogue, it may well be too little, too late. Each side has vowed to ratchet up its response to the other’s attacks.

In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Maariv published Friday, Mohammed Dahlan, the Palestinian security chief in Gaza, said he believes that Israelis now want to go to war with the Palestinians.

“You want war? All right, then. What can we do, then?” Dahlan said. “Most of the people here have the impression that the [Israeli military] wants to destroy the Palestinian people, and they react accordingly.”

Palestinians are so determined to avenge the deaths of hundreds and the wounding of thousands in clashes with Israeli soldiers during the last 9 1/2 months, Dahlan said, that it is impossible to achieve the seven attack-free days Sharon demands as the precondition for a six-week “cooling-off” period that would eventually lead to a resumption of talks.

Dahlan urged Israel to lift its blockades of Palestinian towns and villages and open the border crossings to Egypt and Jordan, saying that then “people would have a reason to stop the violence.”

But such a move seemed remote from the reality on the ground. Troops in armored personnel carriers were deploying in key West Bank intersections, and the army briefly entered Palestinian-controlled territory twice Thursday night.

Israel’s thrust into the Palestinian city of Nablus came Thursday night, just hours after Palestinians injured a Jewish settler, his wife and their infant as they drove in a van near Nablus. Israeli tanks fired shells at Palestinian security outposts, killing one person and injuring several others.

Later that night, army tanks rumbled briefly into the Palestinian-controlled part of Hebron in the West Bank, the only city where the Israelis and the Palestinians share authority.

Tanks shelled three outposts of the Force 17, an elite Palestinian security unit, in Hebron, injuring nearly two dozen Palestinians, according to the Palestinians.

The attack in Hebron came after a Jewish settler was killed in a nearby settlement and another was injured in a drive-by shooting. The injured settler later died of his wounds.

A mostly Palestinian city where several hundred Jews live under the protection of a large Israeli military force, Hebron was said to be seething with tension after settlers rampaged through Palestinian-controlled areas, attacking passersby, smashing shop windows and burning fields of nearby Palestinian villages.