Palestinians Defiant on Demands

Six Palestinians, including a top militia commander, and one Israeli were killed Thursday as violence surged in the aftermath of the assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi. Early today, Israeli tanks and troops thrust into the Palestinian-controlled West Bank town of Beit Jala in retaliation for renewed shooting on a Jewish neighborhood.

Vowing revenge, Israelis buried Zeevi, a hard-line ultranationalist, on Thursday, while Palestinian officials defiantly rejected Israeli demands to hand over his assassins.

With the region plunging anew into a brutal cycle of bloodshed and payback, Israel underscored its threat to widen its “war on terror” by surrounding three Palestinian cities on Thursday, then Beit Jala and, briefly, Bethlehem early today. It was near Bethlehem that the Palestinian militia commander, who had topped Israel’s most-wanted list, was killed when his car blew up Thursday night.

An 11-year-old Palestinian girl and an Israeli hiker were among those killed Thursday as shootings were reported from south of Jerusalem to Jericho in the West Bank and also in the Gaza Strip.

Zeevi’s assassination Wednesday, the first of a Cabinet minister by an Arab, dramatically hardened Israeli attitudes and threatens to shift a year of Israeli-Palestinian warfare into an even deadlier realm. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon promised harsh retribution against Palestinian factions, and Sharon’s government embarked on a campaign to delegitimize Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat.

Headlines in Israel’s newspapers screamed part of the story: “The Era of Arafat Is Over, Sharon Says; Israel Threatens War.” Officials tried to equate Arafat’s regime with Afghanistan’s extremist Islamic Taliban, saying it should face the same fate.

“We cannot accept the fact that the Palestinian Authority exists safely by our side while every day people are killed in Israel,” said Cabinet minister Danny Naveh, who often reflects Sharon’s thinking. “The Palestinian Authority must learn there is a heavy price for this terror.”

Sharon, in an emergency Cabinet session called after Zeevi’s assassination, gave Arafat an ultimatum to extradite the suspects to Israel or face a military punishment. Failure to comply would result in the Palestinian Authority being declared a “terrorist entity” and dealt with as such, the Cabinet said.

A deadline was not set, but Israeli media reported Thursday that Sharon will allow Arafat a week, coinciding with an official mourning period.

Palestinian officials refused, saying it was their job to bring Zeevi’s killers to justice.

“This ultimatum is an Israeli blackmail attempt, not [an effort] to find a solution to the present crisis,” Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed-Rabbo said. New incursions into Ramallah and Jenin in the West Bank were meant to torpedo all efforts to forge a truce, he said.

Despite their defiance, Palestinians arrested nearly a dozen members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the radical faction that claimed responsibility for Zeevi’s assassination.

Israelis are skeptical of these arrest reports, however, saying arrests in the past have been cosmetic, with prisoners given benefit of the “revolving doors” of Palestinian jails.

Atef Abeiyat, a militia commander from Arafat’s Fatah movement who had been sought by Israel, was killed Thursday night along with two other Fatah gunmen when the car they were traveling in exploded near the West Bank town of Bethlehem.

Israel had repeatedly demanded his arrest, accusing him of the September shooting death of an Israeli settler woman, among other attacks. Palestinian police had briefly detained Abeiyat but released him.

The Israeli government suggested that Abeiyat accidentally blew himself up preparing a bomb, but Palestinians blamed Israel.

Shortly after Abeiyat was killed, Palestinian gunmen opened fire on the Jewish neighborhood of Gilo, on disputed territory along Jerusalem’s southern outskirts, and Israeli troops fired back, before infantrymen back by helicopters seized Beit Jala early today. Israelis consider attacks on Gilo to cross a line in the sand; retaliation in the past has been harsh and in August also included the invasion of largely Christian Beit Jala, which was frequently used by the Palestinian shooters.

In Jenin, Israeli tanks advanced into the southern edge of the city, meeting spotty resistance from armed Palestinians. The Ibrahimiyat girls’ elementary school came under Israeli fire in the attack. Riham abu Ward, 11, was killed, and Tahreer Manasra, also 11, was critically wounded with a bullet lodged in her skull.

Tahreer, who had been playing in the school courtyard, was rushed to the Rafidia Hospital in nearby Nablus, where she underwent emergency surgery. Outside the intensive-care unit where the ponytailed Tahreer lay unconscious, her brother Mohammed recalled the morning’s incidents. He said he saw Israeli tanks moving to within 300 yards of the school and then heard shooting and the explosions of tank shells. But he never imagined his sister would be hurt.

“I thought they were safe in school,” said Mohammed, a 27-year-old worker in a concrete-block factory. “I didn’t expect them to shoot at a school.”

The army denied that the school had been targeted, and army spokesman Lt. Col. Olivier Rafowicz said troops came under fire from Palestinian positions “in the school area.” But a lieutenant in the operation was later suspended for leading his unit too far into built-up areas of the Jenin neighborhood.

Rafowicz said the incursions into Jenin and Ramallah were aimed at preventing suicide bombers and other potential attackers from entering Israel. Nablus was also sealed off later Thursday, and army positions around Jenin were being fortified late Thursday, residents said.

The tanks that entered Ramallah took up positions along a main road on the northern side of the city, occupying a neighborhood where Arafat’s chief deputy, Mahmoud Abbas, better known as Abu Mazen, lives.

Israeli troops earlier Thursday conducted house-to-house searches in Azariya, a West Bank village just east of Jerusalem. Among the 50 or so people rousted from their homes by 150 troops and helicopter searchlights at 2:30 in the morning was the family of Ziad abu Ziad, Arafat’s minister for Jerusalem affairs.

A youth described as being in his late teens was seized by the troops, who found him hiding under a blue Peugeot belonging to the Abu Ziad family. Israeli radio linked the suspect to the Zeevi case, but there was no official comment.

And still later Thursday, one Israeli was reported killed and at least two others were injured in a Palestinian ambush south of Jericho.

Meanwhile, Zeevi was buried in a somber state funeral. After lying in state outside the Knesset, as Israel’s parliament is known, army generals bore Zeevi’s coffin to its resting place at the Mt. Herzl military cemetery. A soldier held a display of Zeevi’s many combat medals and the insignias of the various units he served in during his decades in the army.

In eulogies offered by Zeevi’s sons and two of his grandchildren, the family’s message echoed the national mood: He had been marginalized during his life for his views--such as advocating the expulsion of Arabs from Israeli-controlled territory--but his assassination was proof that the government must wage an all-out war on terror.

Even Avraham Burg, the dovish Knesset speaker, delivered a harsh message in his eulogy, given during services held on the Knesset plaza.

“Listen well, murderers of Ramallah. Hark, assassins of Jenin. Have no illusions: Our disputes are not weakness; they are for the sake of the existence of the Jewish people in this land. These are disputes among patriots. Nothing, but nothing, will move us from here. We are here to stay.”

The consensus among Israelis is that Sharon has decided to cast aside all moderation and attack the Palestinians aggressively, even if it means doing irreparable damage to Arafat’s regime.

Wilkinson reported from the West Bank, Curtius from Jerusalem.