THE MIDDLE EAST: The Israeli army yesterday tore up the runway at the Palestinian Gaza Airport, in continuing retaliation for the shooting dead of four of its soldiers by Hamas gunmen on Wednesday, thereby offering what it said was "a glimpse" of the military strength it could use against the Palestinian Authority. David Horovitz, reports from Jerusalem.
Army bulldozers dug out long trenches in the runway tarmac - rendering it completely unusable. The army also imposed a blockade around the southern Gaza town of Rafah, and arrested eight men allegedly involved in arms smuggling. It made further arrests near the West Bank cities of Nablus and Ramallah. On Thursday, it had bulldozed what the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross calculated were 53 or 54 homes in Rafah refugee camp, leaving 100 families homeless.
A Red Cross spokesman said he deplored that "600 people" had been left with nowhere to live, and noted that "house destructions are prohibited under the Geneva Conventions unless there is an absolute military necessity." Israel said it demolished only 14 homes, and that they had been used by gunmen to fire on Israeli targets or to cover arms smuggling.
The Palestinian Authority had been re-laying the airport runway in recent days, with Israel's consent, following a similar bulldozing incident on December 4th, when Israel was retaliating for Hamas suicide bombings in Jerusalem and Haifa. "This action was ... to show a glimpse of what can and will be done in the future if the situation worsens," a local Israeli army commander, Col Imad Farris, said.
Aides to the Palestinian President, Mr Yasser Arafat, called for international intervention and described the Israeli retaliation as "provocation" - designed to torpedo US and EU peacemaking efforts.
Mr Marwan Barghouti, a leader of the Tanzim militia who is alleged by Israel to have orchestrated numerous attacks inside Israel and against Jewish settlers in the West Bank, said Palestinians could not now be expected to "sit with their arms folded".
Spokesmen for the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, countered that Wednesday's attack on the soldiers in southern Israel, although carried out by Hamas, had been facilitated by Mr Arafat's refusal to mount a genuine effort to smash the Islamic extr- emist groups. Mr Sharon has said he intends to keep Mr Arafat restricted to Ramallah for the foreseeable future.
However, the prime minister has sanctioned a new round of US-hosted meetings between Israeli and Palestinian security chiefs next week, ahead of the possible return to the region of the US envoy, Mr Anthony Zinni.
In further violence yesterday, a Palestinian man was shot and wounded by an Israeli soldier in Hebron and an Israeli man was stabbed in the stomach by masked men in southern Jerusalem.
The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine announced in Damascus yesterday that it, like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, would no longer honour Mr Arafat's ceasefire call.
At a conference in Lebanon this week, attended by leaders of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hizbullah, 130 Muslim clerics and scholars from 30 countries issued a statement that called for the destruction of Israel and described suicide bombings against "the Zionist enemy" as "the highest rank of martyrdom" and as "legitimate" according to "God's book, the Koran and the teachings of His Prophet."