THE MIDDLE EAST: The Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, dramatically intensified what he now describes as Israel's war with the Palestinians yesterday, sending troops backed by dozens of tanks deep into the West Bank city of Tulkarm, and attacking Palestinian Authority offices and police installations in Gaza and other West Bank cities.
Late last night, Israeli troops were surrounding Tulkarm refugee camp, where some 300 gunmen from Mr Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction of the PLO were believed to have congregated, and a bloody confrontation seemed inevitable. Thirteen Palestinians, including two ambulance workers, had been killed in the Tulkarm fighting late last night,four Palestinians died in gunbattles in Gaza, and an Islamic Jihad activist was shot by troops when he fired on them in the north area of the West Bank.
Fourteen Israelis were injured when a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up outside a hotel in one of the largest West Bank settlements, Ariel. A second suicide bombing was thwarted at a restaurant in Jerusalem's Germany Colony residential neighbourhood, when an alert waiter spotted a Palestinian man carrying a backpack trailing wires, pushed him out of the restaurant and cut the wires, which proved to be linked to an explosive device.
Mr Sharon is said to have ordered what is being described as an open-ended "rolling" military operation, in the wake of a spate of attacks last weekend in which more than 20 Israelis were killed. With Mr Arafat's Fatah loyalists, rather than members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, carrying out most of those attacks, it appears the army has been given leeway to strike ever closer to Mr Arafat himself.
Late on Wednesday, an Israeli missile fell just a few metres from the Ramallah office where Mr Arafat was meeting the EU envoy, Mr Miguel Moratinos, blowing out the windows and shutting off electricity. Mr Arafat was on the phone to the Israeli Foreign Minister, Mr Shimon Peres, at the time. Mr Peres and his Labour Party leader, Mr Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, say they are determined to remain part of Mr Sharon's unity government, but are simultaneously warning that Israel is moving close to a full-scale reinvasion of Palestinian territory.
Mr Ben-Eliezer, who is also the Minister of Defence, cautioned last night that this would again put the entire Palestinian people under Israeli occupation and asked rhetorically: "Will this reduce terror attacks or simply increase their frequency?" Mr Arafat, in defiant mood yesterday, declared, "no one can shake the Palestinians" and exhorted supporters at his Ramallah HQ to prepare to march "together, as one, to Jerusalem."
Mr Sharon is in defiant mood too. Overnight, the US Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, had accused both him and Mr Arafat of failing to think through the implications of their policies, and had said of Mr Sharon: "If you declare war on the Palestinians and think you can solve the problem by seeing how many Palestinians can be killed, I don't know that leads us anywhere." The prime minister responded, in a statement, "Israel has never declared war on the Palestinians," but was fighting "terror organisations in the framework of its right of self defence."
Deaglán de Bréadún adds:
The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, has urged the Israeli and Palestinian leaders to accept the invitation to talks issued by the President Mubarak of Egypt.
The Minister welcomed the growing support for the Saudi peace plan which, he said, "offers Israel the prospect of normalisation of relations with its neighbours in exchange for withdrawal from all occupied lands".
President Bush is sending the US Middle East envoy, Mr Anthony Zinni, back to the region to try to calm escalating Israeli-Palestinian violence, a Bush administration official said yesterday.