THE MIDDLE EAST: In an operation that Israeli army sources said marked the end of its "special treatment" of Hebron, a large force of tanks and infantry poured into the West Bank city yesterday, imposed a curfew, closed off streets, smashed through a vegetable market, shut down police, television and radio stations, and began house-to-house searches for "wanted" Intifada militants.
The re-invasion of Hebron, which underlined that Israel's overall strategy for countering the Intifada is unchanged following the Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon's, emphatic election victory on Tuesday, was ordered in response to the killings of more than 20 Israelis in and around the city since late last year, Israeli officials said.
Although the army early last summer retook control of most major West Bank cities - increasing its ability to thwart suicide bombings and other attacks on the one hand, but enforcing curfews and closures that affect hundreds of thousands of ordinary Palestinians on the other - Hebron was not as deeply affected, because of unusually good co-operation between the army and some Palestinian officials and security personnel there.
"We had a different model," said the Israeli officer in charge of yesterday's incursion, who was named only as "Eran". "But we can no longer fight terror here without affecting the local population. You have to take control on the ground."
Further to the north, in Tulkarm, meanwhile, Israeli troops shot dead two Palestinians, including the local commander of the Al-Aksa Brigades, the group affiliated to Mr Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction of the PLO, which has carried out dozens of suicide bombings and other attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians. Palestinian sources said the second man was a worker at a nearby shop.
In Gaza, three more Palestinians were killed as they prepared to fire Qassam rockets across the border into Israel, the army said. Palestinian sources said troops also demolished three homes and two wells in the southern Gaza town of Rafah.
There was no Israeli comment.
Mr Arafat has greeted Mr Sharon's re-election with a plea for an immediate return to the negotiating table. But while Mr Sharon is assuring both Israelis and a concerned President Bush that he will forge a coalition bent on resuming diplomacy, he brushed aside Mr Arafat's plea, calling it "duplicitous".
The Prime Minister can reasonably claim that his overwhelming popularity at the ballot box shows that the public endorses his determined boycott of the Palestinian Authority President. (Mr Sharon's Likud party doubled its representation in the Knesset, while Labour, which favours a resumption of talks with the Palestinian leader, lost almost a third of its seats.) In his efforts to woo parties to the left of the Likud into a "unity coalition", Mr Sharon will meet today with the head of the centrist Shinui faction, Mr Tommy Lapid, and on Monday with Labour leader Mr Amram Mitzna. Some in Labour, notably former prime minister Mr Shimon Peres, are urging that the party "hear out" Mr Sharon rather than sticking to Mr Mitzna's pledge to go into opposition come what may.