Israeli Premier Vows End to Deteriorating Security Situation

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon returned home Thursday from a U.S. visit to face a deteriorating security situation and an escalation in what he called “Palestinian terror” during his four-day absence.

While Sharon was in Washington and New York, an Israeli father of six was killed in a drive-by shooting, a large car bomb was defused in a religious neighborhood of Jerusalem and mortars were fired on a Jewish farming community in Israel and on Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip.

“I shall do exactly as I promised: restore security to the lives of Israeli citizens,” Sharon said.

The prime minister said he explained to Bush administration officials that he had eased military closures of Palestinian towns and villages only to be met “with a step-up in terror.” Sharon told the Americans that he now “intends to take action against these elements.”

The prime minister accused Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite Muslim militia, of being behind some recent attacks. An Israeli security source who requested anonymity said Hezbollah supplied Palestinians with mortars that were later used to attack Israeli targets. Although no one has been injured in the attacks, the official called them a dangerous escalation of the conflict and warned that Israel’s response could be devastating.

But in his airport arrival speech, Sharon said he is determined to fight terrorism without escalating the tense situation that has developed in the run-up to a summit of Arab leaders next week.

The Israelis have accused Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat of trying to provoke them into a massive retaliation to spur increased support for his cause at the summit. The Palestinians say that the military blockades of their towns and villages and the continued refusal to allow most of their workers into Israel is creating a desperate situation and leading to even more violence.

Which course the Palestinian revolt takes now “depends on the other side, on if they have a new policy or not,” said Marwan Barghouti, a leader of Arafat’s Fatah militia in the West Bank.

If the Israeli army continues the blockades and the arrests or killings of Palestinian military leaders, he said in an interview Wednesday, “it is very clear that intifada [uprising] activities will continue.” But Barghouti said he is also considering new, nonviolent tactics to broaden support for the uprising among Palestinians.

Hours before the prime minister’s plane touched down, fierce fighting erupted in Gaza and the West Bank between Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen.

Clashes raged in the Gazan town of Khan Yunis after the funeral of a Palestinian killed by an Israeli tank shell during a clash Wednesday night. The army said Palestinians lobbed five armor-piercing grenades at a post during Thursday’s battle. At least five Palestinians were wounded during two hours of fighting, according to Palestinian sources.

In another incident, the army said it shot and killed a Palestinian on Thursday who allegedly was trying to plant a bomb in an Israeli farming community in Gaza just beyond the fenced border with Israel.

In the West Bank, the army reported that dozens of Molotov cocktails were thrown at troops during clashes with Palestinians in the city of Hebron. Palestinians identified a man injured in the explosion of a bomb-making lab in Nablus earlier in the week as a Fatah activist. Since the signing of the 1993 Oslo peace accords between Israel and the Palestinians, Fatah has generally refrained from making bombs.

“If someone is still thinking about some romantic image of this as an uprising, he is wrong,” said Lt. Col. Olivier Rafowicz, spokesman for the Israeli army in Jerusalem. “This is a real armed conflict--this is a lot of small battles happening all the time.”

An Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem, issued a report Thursday criticizing the army for failing to prevent attacks by Jewish settlers against Palestinians and not always arresting and prosecuting Israeli perpetrators.

The organization said that at least six Palestinians have been killed by settlers since September and that in at least two of those cases, charges were not brought against the alleged attackers. The report also said settlers have rioted in Palestinian towns, stoned cars and shot and beaten Palestinians.

A settler spokesman responded that it was outrageous that the rights group had done no report on Palestinian violence against Israelis.

The upsurge of violence came as a fact-finding committee led by former Sen. George J. Mitchell (D-Maine) visits the area. The international committee is trying to determine the causes of the uprising that began here in late September and has claimed more than 400 lives, the vast majority of them Palestinians. Panel members have met with Arafat and are scheduled to meet with Sharon on Sunday. They expect to have their report completed by the end of April.

The committee “will do its best to act fairly, impartially, truthfully and constructively,” Mitchell told reporters as he toured Palestinian towns. But he cautioned that the panel does not have “the authority or mandate to solve all the problems.”

Speaking at a news conference Thursday after he met with the panel, Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed-Rabbo said the panel should try to help the two sides find a way back to the negotiating table.

The minister refused to answer questions about Palestinian security officers closing the West Bank offices of the popular Arabic-language satellite news channel, Al Jazeera.

Walid Umari, the station’s West Bank correspondent, said security officials closed Al Jazeera’s offices in Ramallah on Wednesday, throwing the staff out and posting guards. He said he was told that the station had offended Arafat by running a promotion for a series on the Lebanese civil war that showed a demonstrator holding aloft a picture of Arafat with a shoe over his head.

“At this moment, we face many problems in covering the incidents in the Palestinian territories,” Umari said.

Al Jazeera is the only uncensored news channel broadcasting in Arabic from the region. Based in Qatar, it regularly airs criticism of Arab regimes.

Former Cabinet minister Hanan Ashrawi said she and other prominent Palestinians had urged Arafat to reopen the station’s offices and ensure that they are never closed again.