Israeli Sweep of Refugee Camps Goes On

Israeli troops with sniffer dogs crept along narrow concrete alleys, climbed through windows and scaled balconies in this crowded Palestinian shantytown Friday but largely came up empty in their hunt for terrorists.

Apprehensive Palestinian women and children, left behind by men who had escaped the dragnet, peered from doorways and cleaned up the mess after the soldiers moved on to the next home.

“They asked me where my sons were,” Alia Jaffer, 55, said shortly after the soldiers left her apartment. “They asked me for our weapons. I told them, ‘Let your dogs find our weapons.’ ”

On the second day of a major assault on two refugee camps, Israeli forces pushed deeper into Balata, in the West Bank city of Nablus, and did deadly battle with Palestinian fighters in the Jenin camp, about 25 miles to the north. One Israeli soldier and seven Palestinians--several gunmen, an Islamic militant and one 10-year-old girl--were killed, taking the two-day death toll to 22. By late in the day, the number of wounded was about 200.

The operations--which Israel says are designed to capture Palestinian militants who have attacked Israelis--were widely condemned by Israeli commentators as overly risky and ineffective. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s political support sank to a new low, dragged down by a bloody conflict now in its 18th month that he has failed to stop.

For Palestinians, this cramped and miserable camp where refugees have lived for the last 52 years has been an enduring symbol of resistance and a crucible for almost every major Palestinian uprising, including the first intifada against Israel in 1987-93. Its residents have never heeded outside authority--not the Jordanians, the Israelis or Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, even though his Fatah movement enjoys wide support here.

Balata is also an urban warrior’s nightmare: Some passageways are so narrow that a donkey cart cannot squeeze through, much less an armored vehicle. Soldiers must walk single file. Jagged corners hide any number of snipers. More than 20,000 people live, practically on top of one another, in less than half a square mile.

Hussam Khader, an outspoken Palestinian legislator from Balata and an influential leader in Nablus, said Sharon deliberately targeted Balata to send a message to all Palestinians.

If Sharon breaks Balata, “he breaks a major pillar in the Palestinian struggle,” Khader said. “For that reason, we insist on making his mission fail.”

The Israeli army said that Balata and Jenin were invaded because they have become hotbeds of terrorism. Many of the suicide bombers or ambushing gunmen who have attacked Israelis in the past 1 1/2 years came from, received shelter in or were equipped with material produced at the camps.

“We want to make it crystal clear: No place is beyond our reach,” Brig Gen. Gershon Yitzhak, the top commander of Israeli troops in the West Bank, said Friday. “No place will be safe for terrorists and those who send them.”

Yitzhak said that “a number” of men wanted for questioning had been detained in the raids and that dozens of bombs, mines and other weapons had been seized. But neither he nor the army would provide further details, and it didn’t appear that any militia leaders had been captured.

In Balata, most of the Palestinian gunmen who initially fought Israeli forces during the raid had apparently slipped out of the camp overnight and into Nablus proper. Many could be seen milling about outside Nablus’ main hospital Friday afternoon, their Kalashnikov assault rifles slung across their backs.

Khader said 63 militiamen whom the Palestinians believe Israel was especially eager to capture were spirited out of the camp in the early hours of the incursion.

Throughout Friday, sniper fire and periodic explosions rattled the squat buildings and nervous residents of the Balata camp. It was not clear whether the blasts came from Israeli charges used to enter buildings or from land mines or other explosive devices left behind by Palestinian fighters.

On Jerusalem Road, the main thoroughfare into Balata and also into Nablus, Israeli armored bulldozers had dug a trench across all four lanes, rendering the road impassable. At the start of the incursion, Israeli forces cut electricity and water to the camp. An army spokeswoman said the water was accidentally cut when a bulldozer plowed through a water main. She said it would be repaired.

To carry out its house-to-house search, the army punched holes in walls, allowing passage from structure to structure without exposure to enemy fire. In some houses, soldiers entered through the windows. In most cases, they herded the occupants into single rooms while conducting the search, residents said.

Balata resident Haya Sherat said soldiers came through the window of an empty bedroom of the home she shares with her extended family. It was about 11 a.m. Friday. The soldiers put Sherat, two sisters-in-law and five children in one room, searched the rest of the house with dogs for about half an hour, then left, she said. Two doors looked as if they had been kicked in, and the refrigerator was broken; otherwise, no major damage was evident.

As they advanced, the soldiers strung up white plastic ribbon to mark the path they took.

Earlier in the day, Bassem abu Mustafa walked out of the camp with his 7-month-old daughter, Iber. Feverish, she needed a doctor. Her father made a run for it when clashes tapered off in the morning, after a sleepless night.

“You can’t tell where the shooting comes from--they’re on top, behind, all around,” Mustafa said, Iber in his arms. “The soldiers are not trying to destroy the houses. They are just trying to scare everybody.”

The fiercest fighting of the day was in Jenin. About 250 armed men were reported trapped by Israeli armor and sharpshooters. Tanks ringed the camp, which is home to about 12,000 people.

On Friday evening, Palestinian gunmen fired on a Jewish neighborhood on Jerusalem’s outskirts, lightly wounding three people. Militias loyal to Arafat have threatened broad retaliation for the Balata and Jenin incursions, a new threshold in the raging conflict.

Amid criticism of the raids from the United Nations and Europe, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said lives would be saved because of them.

“This is an attempt to dismantle the bombs before they cause great damage,” Peres told Army Radio.

If Sharon had hoped that the operations would boost the morale of an Israeli public stunned by recent military losses, the opposite was happening Friday. Commentators were scathing in their criticism of the offensive.

“You have to be either stoned or a gambler to put the army into [Balata] at this point,” military affairs commentator Alex Fishman wrote on the front page of Israel’s largest daily newspaper, Yediot Aharonot. “What’s worse, this decision indicates that [Sharon] has completely given up on the possibility that we will reach some kind of agreement with the Palestinians, one that would not include violence, in the near future.”

In a poll published Friday, support for Sharon had plummeted to its lowest level since he took office nearly a year ago. Sharon has been given high marks for almost his entire term. But Friday’s poll for the Maariv newspaper indicated that a majority of the Israeli public--53%--is dissatisfied with the prime minister.

A wide margin, 73%, said Sharon has failed to deliver on his promises, and 68% said the country is worse off than when he took office.

Sharon won election by a landslide on a promise to make Israelis, already battered by escalating violence, feel safe again. He has launched an increasingly aggressive campaign of military strikes and economic punishment against the Palestinians. But instead of being subdued, the Palestinians have ratcheted up their retaliation, including suicide bombings.