Israel Strikes Hard at Gaza Strip and Shells Arafat's Compound
By SERGE SCHMEMANN
ERUSALEM, March 6 — Israeli forces struck hard today by land, sea and air at the teeming Gaza Strip, where Palestinians breached another red line on Tuesday when they fired rockets into an Israeli town. With the mounting carnage, which added 10 Palestinian and 2 Israeli dead to the toll, the government of Ariel Sharon received an unusual rebuke from Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.
Secretary Powell, speaking before a Congressional committee in Washington, challenged the Israeli prime minister's statement this week that only if Israel continued to increase the other side's losses would the Palestinians sit down to talks.
"Prime Minister Sharon has to take a hard look at his policies to see whether they will work," Secretary Powell said. "If you declare war against the Palestinians thinking that you can solve the problem by seeing how many Palestinians can be killed, I don't know that that leads us anywhere."
For several months, the Bush administration has focused most of its criticism exclusively at Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, insisting that he could do more to curb terrorism. But after a paroxysm of killing in the last week, Secretary Powell — who spoke by phone on Tuesday with Mr. Sharon — said both sides were pursuing policies that would only lead to greater violence. "It's a tragic situation," he said.
Secretary General Kofi Annan of the United Nations also expressed his dismay today, saying that violence in the Middle East was "completely out of hand."
In response to Secretary Powell's remarks, Mr. Sharon's office issued a statement saying that the war was imposed on Israel by the Palestinian Authority. "Israel is only fighting back against the terrorist organization in the context of its right to self- defense," the statement said. "The one who initiated this war has the power to stop it, but he continues to prefer the war of terrorism." Mr. Sharon also said he was postponing a trip to Britain and Spain next week because of the escalating fray.
The day's operations included another shelling of the Ramallah compound of Mr. Arafat, but this time while the Palestinian leader was meeting with the European Union envoy to the Middle East, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, and while the Israeli foreign minister, Shimon Peres, was on the telephone with Mr. Arafat. Neither Mr. Moratinos nor Mr. Arafat was injured, and there was no immediate indication whether the timing of the attack was deliberate.
"It was very loud and very dangerous," reported Nabil Aburdeineh, an aide to Mr. Arafat who was there at the time. "We thought it was so close that it was on the office itself. We informed Mr. Peres, and he said he would check."
The Israelis have dropped shells around Mr. Arafat's compound several times before, apparently to intimidate the Palestinian leader. Mr. Sharon has declared that he has no intention of killing him.
The operation in the Gaza Strip began in the night, and the Israeli Army was reported fighting at five different areas against heavy resistance. Details were sketchy. Israel said it killed several Palestinians, arrested several others and destroyed a house in which a wanted guerrilla was hiding. Palestinians said an F-16 jet fighter fired a missile at the police headquarters in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in Gaza, which houses the commander of Palestinian forces in Gaza.
Palestinians also reported that Israeli naval vessels approached the Gaza shore and fired missiles at the Palestinian naval police, killing four.
The Israeli commander for Gaza, Brig. Gen. Yisrael Ziv, called the operations successful and said they would continue. "This is part of an ongoing operation, and our success will be measured by our perseverance, results and patience," he said.
The army ordered the raids into Gaza after two crude Qassam rockets, which the Israelis say are manufactured by the militant movement Hamas, were launched into the town of Sderot on Tuesday. One struck a building and injured a child. Israel had warned that firing rockets into urban areas would have serious consequences. But with the carnage at record levels, there was little to distinguish retaliation from escalation.
Most of the day's incidents were at Israeli roadblocks and checkpoints, at which soldiers have grown increasingly jumpy after several attacks by gunmen or suicide bombers. At one roadblock near Nablus, soldiers shot two Palestinians, one fatally, and said they were carrying explosives in a bag. Near Kalkilya, another West Bank town, a man blew himself up with his own grenade after being ordered to stop.
At yet another roadblock, one near Maccabim in the West Bank which had been attacked by a woman suicide bomber, soldiers opened fire on two men who began to flee after being ordered to stop. Both were wounded, and they turned out to be Israeli Arabs.
With the violence, and increasing recriminations in the cabinet, the tone in the Israeli press turned distinctly angrier and more depressed.
Sever Plotzer, a veteran commentator for Yediot Ahronot, spared no words: "The house is on fire, and the government is clueless. What do you want us to do, the best of its ministers ask, shrugging their shoulders and spreading their hands in a gesture of helplessness. You bunch of impotent fools, we are tired of you. Pack your bags, gather up your papers, return the keys and leave the government."
Hemi Shalev, a respected columnist for Maariv, was less dramatic but no less direct. "The question of questions of the national unity government was, `what is the alternative?' But now the possibility is being raised that the right answer all this time was — anything but this." Mr. Shalev expressed the hope that the firing of Qassam missiles on Sderot might finally "awaken the Americans from their winter hibernation."
In this mood, threats by various factions to abandon the government, and force new elections, have grown, along with tensions among the ministers. The Israeli press reported that at a four-hour discussion among senior ministers on what steps to take next, Mr. Peres declared, "Had I known that the government would find itself in this current reality in the confrontation with the Palestinians, I would not have joined Sharon's unity government."
In the current thinking, new elections would be likely to lead to Mr. Sharon's replacement by Benjamin Netanyahu, who was prime minister from 1996 to 1999. Mr. Netanyahu, also a member of the right-wing Likud, has said that if he returns to office, he would bring down the Arafat administration, wall off the Palestinians with a fence and conduct a military sweep of the Palestinian areas to clear them of weapons.