Sharon Vows to Stay Course Despite Raids

Hours after Palestinian gunmen killed four Israeli soldiers at a fog-shrouded outpost in the Gaza Strip and a fifth in the West Bank, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon faced down jeering, booing opponents of a U.S.-backed peace plan Sunday and declared that the initiative would move forward.

“I intend to fulfill my promise to the people: I will bring security and I will bring peace!” the prime minister told a raucous convention of his Likud Party in a speech repeatedly interrupted by hecklers who chanted slogans, blew whistles and waved signs denouncing the peace plan, known as the road map.

The day’s attacks, the first since last week’s summit of Sharon, President Bush and Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, pointed up the pitfalls facing Sharon and Abbas as they try to keep the fledgling peace process from foundering.

In a clear challenge to Abbas, three militant groups that are often at odds with one another -- Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, an armed offshoot of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction -- claimed rare joint responsibility for the early morning raid on the Israeli military post just inside the Gaza Strip.

A senior Hamas political leader, Abdulaziz Rantisi, called the attack a message that the militant groups “are in the trenches of resistance together.”

“It announces the rejection of what happened at the summit, it announces rejection of the summit, and it announces that resistance is the only option,” Rantisi said.

While Hamas and Islamic Jihad occasionally have cooperated in planning and staging suicide bombings and other attacks, the participation of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade in Sunday’s assault was an ominous sign that Arafat, who has been sidelined under pressure from the U.S. and Israel, might be quietly giving loyalists the green light to use violence to undermine Abbas.

The Palestinian prime minister, also known as Abu Mazen, has been trying to reach a cease-fire with the various armed Palestinian groups but has been sharply rebuffed in the wake of last week’s summit in Aqaba, Jordan.

The groups, particularly Hamas, have denounced Abbas for failing in his summit statement to lay claim to Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state and for not demanding that millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants be allowed to return to their homes in what is now Israel.

The display of noisy opposition from within the ranks of Sharon’s own party, meanwhile, was a reminder of the deep fissures in Israeli society that have been laid bare by the peace plan.

The shouts of “Sharon, go home!” and signs reading “Sharon surrendered to terrorism!” stood in striking contrast to his near-coronation as Likud leader last year, when he easily fended off a challenge from rival Benjamin Netanyahu. The cheers from the party faithful then hailed Sharon as the “king of Israel.”

Among the road map’s controversial aspects for Israelis are provisions demanding that a number of Jewish settlement outposts in the Palestinian territories be dismantled.

While Jewish settlers make up only a small share of the Israeli population -- numbering about 225,000 out of about 5 million Israeli Jews -- they have always wielded disproportionate political clout. However, public opinion surveys suggest that a growing number of Israelis -- nearly 60%, according to a Tel Aviv University poll released Sunday -- believe that all but large settlement blocs should be relinquished as part of a peace accord.

Because Sharon was for so many years an ardent champion of the settlers’ movement, their sense of rage and betrayal is palpable -- and likely to intensify in coming days as the government prepares to begin dismantling the small unauthorized settlement outposts scattered across rocky West Bank hilltops.

Israeli media reports said army troops could begin evacuating the first outposts as early as Tuesday. The government has been negotiating with settler leaders to try to stave off violent confrontations, but senior military officials said the evacuations would go ahead even in the face of resistance.

With Bush now having involved himself personally in the push for peace, U.S. officials insisted that Sunday’s violence must not be allowed to galvanize opposition to the road map.

“What we have to do now is make sure we don’t allow this tragic, terrible incident to derail the momentum of the road map,” Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said on “Fox News Sunday.”

To expedite implementation of the road map, John Wolf, a veteran U.S. diplomat and arms expert, is being assigned to the region this week, Powell said. Wolf and his staff will help the Palestinians and the Israelis begin to talk to each other again, will foster steps to rebuild confidence and will monitor progress, Powell said.

A key U.S. goal now is to help Abbas rebuild the Palestinian security forces and develop a capability to confront militant groups if they will not agree to a cease-fire.

“We’re going to do everything we can to help him and his Cabinet develop the capability to deal with terrorism in Gaza and the West Bank,” Powell said. The CIA, along with Egypt and Jordan, has been working to train a new force, and those efforts will now accelerate, U.S. officials said this weekend.

The deaths of the four soldiers in Gaza on Sunday was the Israeli army’s largest loss of life in a single assault since a four-man tank crew was killed in February not far from the same spot.

The army said the assailants apparently mingled with a crowd of Palestinian workers preparing to go to their jobs near the Erez crossing point between Gaza and Israel shortly after 5 a.m.

Dressed in army uniforms and armed with assault rifles and grenades, the three gunmen approached an adjacent army outpost known as Shield No. 12, surrounded by concrete blocks and draped in camouflage netting.

Emerging suddenly from a thick mist, the trio shot dead three soldiers at close range at the outpost’s entrance and a fourth soldier inside before being fatally shot themselves, Maj. Gen. Doron Almog, the head of the army’s southern command, told reporters. Four other soldiers were wounded.

“We had finished our night guard duty and I went to sleep,” one of the injured soldiers told YNET, a Web site affiliated with the Yediot Aharonot newspaper. “At some point I heard shots and we didn’t understand what was happening.... There was a heavy fog and we couldn’t see what was going on.”

In a statement claiming responsibility for the attack, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade identified the gunmen -- one of them 21 years old, the others 22, all from the northern Gaza Strip -- by name. The militant groups also circulated a videotape of the three, made before the attack, showing them seated with their weapons and a Koran on the table in front of them, with the flags of their respective organizations draped on the wall behind them.

Later Sunday, in the volatile West Bank town of Hebron, gunmen staged two separate attacks on Israeli forces, the army said. An Israeli policeman was wounded in one, and an Israeli soldier was killed in the other. Israeli troops shot and killed the two attackers. A militant group, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, claimed responsibility for the slaying.

In the aftermath of the Gaza attack, the Bush administration had tough words for Arafat. The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade emerged from Arafat’s Fatah movement within the Palestine Liberation Organization and is believed to be ultimately loyal to Arafat.

Powell urged Arafat, who last week accused Sharon of lacking good faith, to work more actively for the road map as the only way to achieve a Palestinian state.

“Yasser Arafat has to play a more positive role than he’s been playing.... He now has to start speaking out for peace,” Powell said.

National security advisor Condoleezza Rice called on all parties that back the road map, including Arab nations, to assume a more active role at this critical juncture to ensure that the effort does not go awry.

Key Arab states -- including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Bahrain, representing the Arab League -- must now follow through on their pledge to cut off funding and any other assistance to groups rejecting peace, she added.

“There are a lot of people who have responsibilities. We’re going to talk to all of them -- not just Prime Minister Abbas,” Rice said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

With Israeli officials citing a flood of intelligence warnings about more planned attacks, tight restrictions on Palestinians’ entry into Israel from both Gaza and the West Bank were reimposed Sunday. The closures had been eased last week as a goodwill gesture.

Palestinian officials expressed frustration over the restrictions, saying the brunt of the hardship would be borne by ordinary people who only wanted to be able to travel to school and work.

“This military escalation and the difficulty of life will lead to more deterioration,” said Nabil Amr, the information minister. “The only way out is to return to the political process and start implementing the road map.”

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Militant groups

A look at the three Palestinian militant groups that claimed joint responsibility for an attack Sunday on an Israeli army outpost.

Hamas: Founded in 1987; largest militant Islamic group in region. Main opposition to Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority. Has killed hundreds of Israelis with suicide bombings, remote-controlled bombs, rifle attacks. Runs network of social and charitable services for Palestinians. Goal is destroying Israel and creating Islamic-ruled Palestine. Broke off talks Friday with Palestinian officials aimed at ending attacks on Israelis.

Islamic Jihad: Founded in late 1970s. Much smaller group than Hamas. Has no network of schools, clinics or mosques; focuses entirely on terrorism. Said Saturday it would continue attacks against Israel despite truce talks.

Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade: Armed wing of Arafat’s Fatah movement, often attacks Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank. Formed after current Palestinian uprising began in September 2000. Is divided on whether to commit itself to U.S.-backed peace plan and end attacks.

Sources: Associated Press, Council on Foreign Relations

King reported from Jerusalem and Wright from Washington.