Israeli Fire Backs Arafat Into Corner

Using dynamite and bulldozers, Israeli forces on Friday flattened much of what remained of Yasser Arafat’s headquarters and left the Palestinian leader trapped on a single floor of his office building, which was raked with machine-gun fire and struck by at least one tank shell.

The assault, which continued into this morning, was intended to physically and politically isolate the Palestinian Authority president after two suicide attacks on Israelis this week.

Moving systematically, troops destroyed a few remaining ancillary buildings before focusing their attention on the core of the Ramallah complex. After knocking down a second-story pedestrian bridge that connected Arafat’s office to a building that housed many of his guards, soldiers destroyed the stairwell in his building--leaving the Palestinian leader unable to go up, down or out.

Israel Radio said today that he was isolated to just a few rooms with some aides and what it called “fugitives.”

Dozens of Arafat’s guards and assistants surrendered during the assault, which the Israelis said was aimed at arresting 20 men wanted for alleged terrorism. The men did not appear to be among those who emerged.

Around midnight, Israeli gunners opened fire on Arafat’s building, strafing it with tracer bullets. One shell fired by a tank hit the floor above the Palestinian Authority president.

Gen. Ruth Yaron, a spokeswoman for the Israel Defense Forces, said those were “warning shots” designed to flush out the wanted men. “This is putting pressure on terrorists who are sending suicide bombers into the streets of Tel Aviv,” she told CNN.

Palestinian officials insisted that they had not received an official request for the men. Nabil abu Rudaineh, an Arafat spokesman, denied having heard demands issued by Israeli soldiers over loudspeakers.

Among those being sought was Tawfiq Tirawi, the Palestinian intelligence chief in the West Bank.

The siege left Arafat once again a virtual prisoner in his quarters, confined to the only building left standing in what was an extensive government compound. Adding to the sense that he was at the mercy of the occupying troops, Palestinian officials said an Israeli sniper shot and killed one of his bodyguards Friday morning.

Arafat was said to be unharmed. He has been confined to the compound almost continuously since December, enduring challenges not only from the Israeli army but also from within his own ranks.

“He is used to this sort of horrible life,” Abu Rudaineh said.

The same could be said of many Palestinians and Israelis.

The events of the last few days have shattered the fragile hopes of many that nearly two years of unremitting violence might finally give way to at least a tentative peace. Israeli and Palestinian officials had been participating in U.N.-sponsored talks in New York when a suicide bombing Wednesday ended a six-week lull in such attacks on Israeli civilians.

That was followed Thursday by another attack, aboard a bus on a crowded Tel Aviv street. A 19-year-old Scot, Jonathan Jesner of Glasgow, died Friday of wounds suffered in that assault, bringing the death toll to seven, including the bomber.

The bombings left many Israelis despondent. The resulting crackdown on Arafat, accompanied by renewed curfews and an Israeli incursion into the Gaza Strip, had a similar effect on Palestinians.

“This has made the people even more hopeless and desperate,” said Obeida Barghouti, a Palestinian who was sitting in a neighbor’s backyard a few blocks from Arafat’s compound Friday morning.

Israeli tanks surrounded and then entered Arafat’s compound within hours of the Tel Aviv bombing. Early Friday, the Israeli forces destroyed 11 trailers that housed some of Arafat’s staff and set off an explosion that leveled the tattered remains of an intelligence headquarters next to Arafat’s office.

As billows of white smoke and dust engulfed and rose over the compound, shock waves rocked walls and rattled windows throughout much of Ramallah.

Shortly after noon, a blast took down another building in the compound. A short time later, two Israeli army bulldozers and an excavator could be seen finishing the job, clawing and scraping away at slabs of concrete and twisted steel bars near Arafat’s office.

After Israeli troops destroyed the pedestrian bridge late Friday night, they ordered Palestinians in the building opposite Arafat’s to surrender. More than 20 came out at that point, emerging into the rubble of a courtyard in single file, hands above their heads. The building in which they had been housed was then at least partially knocked down. It contained a conference hall where Arafat had delivered a speech to the Palestinian Legislative Council last week.

By dismantling the stairwell in Arafat’s building, the Israelis left him stuck on the second floor. Abu Rudaineh, Arafat’s spokesman, said he feared that the office might collapse and warned that the Israelis were courting “a big disaster.”

In the Gaza Strip, meanwhile, Israeli tanks on Friday drove nearly to the center of Gaza City, the deepest incursion there since Israel handed administrative control to the Palestinian Authority in 1994. Israeli forces destroyed several metal shops they claimed were being used as weapons factories but that Palestinians said made car brakes and window frames.

Two Palestinians were killed: a 35-year-old man, Ahmad Loubad, who was described by officials and acquaintances as mentally disabled, and a 25-year-old woman.

In the town of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, a 14-year-old Palestinian boy was reported shot to death late Friday, apparently by Israeli soldiers. A 20-year-old Palestinian man also reportedly was slain.

For the 73-year-old Arafat, the siege of his compound is the latest in a series of setbacks that Israeli leaders hope signal the end of his political career. Last week, his Cabinet resigned after it became clear the Palestinian Legislative Council was about to pass a vote of no confidence in his government. That helped fuel speculation that Arafat’s days are numbered.

Although Arafat shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 with two Israeli leaders, many in Israel regard him as an unreconstructed terrorist. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has made it clear that he is unwilling to deal with him directly.

Sharon’s government has blamed Arafat for the repeated Palestinian attacks on civilians that began almost two years ago and have claimed more than 600 Israeli lives. Arafat has argued that Israel, by isolating him and imposing military control over the West Bank and Gaza, has made it impossible for his administration to exert any control over extremists. The Palestinians say they have lost more than 2,000 people in the last two years.

Sharon’s troops have kept Arafat under siege on and off for months, and the prime minister declared Thursday that he intended the latest assault to further isolate the Palestinian president. Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer stressed Friday that Israel was not planning to deport Arafat, as some expected.

“We have no intention of expelling him or firing at him,” Ben-Eliezer said. “We want to isolate him.”

Israeli television reported Friday that the consensus among analysts was that Arafat would be thrown out eventually, just not now. The army has named its Ramallah operation A Matter of Time.

Abu Rudaineh insisted Friday that Arafat, far from isolated, had spent the day on the phone with a list of world leaders, including President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and King Abdullah II of Jordan.

The U.N. Security Council, responding to a Palestinian request, called a Monday meeting about the violence.

For moderate Palestinians and Israelis, who have spent years waiting with dwindling hopes for peace, the latest events suggested their goal was receding by the day.

“Unless the Palestinians get rid of Arafat and come forward with an incredibly far-reaching peace proposal, there’s nothing that’s going to push this government off its present policy trail,” said Mark Heller, a researcher at the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv.

Walid Ahmad, a Palestinian banker and real estate investor, spent Friday holed up in his apartment in Ramallah, unable to go outside because of an Israeli-imposed curfew. He is no fan of Arafat, he said, and is appalled by attacks such as the Tel Aviv bus bombing.

But Ahmad didn’t see much likelihood that the attacks would stop.

“The situation we’re in now is crazy,” he said. “These Israeli attacks radicalize Palestinian society, and they increase Sharon’s support in Israel.”

Peace, he said, seems ever more elusive.