A Criticized Sharon Defends F-16 Raids

JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon defended himself Sunday against withering criticism both here and abroad for his decision to unleash F-16 fighter jets on the Palestinians, saying his government will “do everything necessary” to protect its citizens.

Senior army officers and government officials spent much of the day explaining why Friday’s airstrikes, which included dropping bombs on Palestinian cities, were not a disproportionate response to a suicide bombing that killed five Israelis at a shopping mall that morning. But some frustrated politicians called for the United States to intervene and extricate Israelis and Palestinians from the cycle of violence they seem unable to break.

The bloodshed continued Sunday, with an Israeli soldier shot and wounded by Palestinian snipers, and Col. Jibril Rajoub, the Palestinians’ West Bank security chief, lightly wounded when Israeli tanks shelled his home in Ramallah after an exchange of fire with nearby Palestinian gunmen.

Early this morning, Israeli helicopter gunships struck on the outskirts of Gaza City in the Gaza Strip. The Israelis said they destroyed a mortar shell factory and a Palestinian security post. Palestinians denied that the plant that was hit produced the ordnance and called the attack an escalation. Four Palestinians were injured.

Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said that the shelling of Rajoub’s home was accidental and that he had tried to call the security chief. Five of Rajoub’s bodyguards reportedly were injured. The Israeli commander in charge of Ramallah told Israel Radio that his troops targeted the house after Palestinian gunmen opened fire from it on an Israeli army position.

The Israelis have killed several Palestinian militants in what they call “targeted shootings” since the outbreak of violence in September, but the government has said it will not kill political leaders. Rajoub was on good terms with his Israeli counterparts in the security system before September and has participated in on-again, off-again talks with them in the last eight months in an effort to restore security cooperation.

Despite the escalating violence, Sharon insisted that Israel’s approach remains a defensive one.

“We will do everything necessary and use everything we have to protect Israeli citizens,” he told the mass-circulation daily Yediot Aharonot. The prime minister repeated his position that he is interested in resuming talks with the Palestinians once attacks on Israelis cease.

Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland, head of planning for the army, told reporters that the Palestinian Authority made a “strategic decision” in March to step up its fight against Israel. The authority, he said, is actively encouraging militants to attack Israeli civilians inside Israel, as well as in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and is allowing them to manufacture bombs.

Israel’s decision to use F-16s was a “tactical” one, Eiland said, and did not mark a new strategy of all-out warfare. The army wanted to destroy the prison in the West Bank city of Nablus where a wanted Hamas militant, Mahmoud Abu Hanoud, had taken shelter, he said.

“Attack helicopters were not considered effective enough” to destroy such a large building, Eiland said. Abu Hanoud escaped with minor injuries, but several Palestinian jailers and police were killed in the attack, and many civilians were wounded.

Using F-16s “doesn’t imply that this is a new phase--we see it as something that will not be used very often,” Eiland said. The army, he said, still does not regard the Palestinian Authority as an enemy, despite the blurring of distinctions between security forces and militant groups, and therefore is not using every means available against it.

The explanations were unlikely to mollify Sharon’s critics, including a nearly unanimous Israeli press, which blasted the use of warplanes against Palestinian cities as militarily pointless and diplomatically disastrous.

“In the jargon of military high tech, there exists the phrase ‘smart bombs,’ ” wrote Sever Plotzker in a signed editorial for Yediot Aharonot. “The bombs that were dropped on Nablus and Ramallah were incomparably stupid. Idiot bombs.”

Yossi Sarid, leader of the left-wing opposition in Israel’s parliament, said the time has come for the United States to plunge back into the region and try to halt the violence that has engulfed both peoples.