Ariel Sharon: "Don't look at me like that....I did'nt do anything"!
Posted on 06/09/2002 8:26:39 PM PDT by blam
Israel Raids Arafat HQ Ahead of Sharon-Bush Meeting
Sun Jun 9,11:11 PM ET
By Mohammed Assadi
RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Israeli forces raided Palestinian President Yasser Arafat 's Ramallah compound on Monday, just hours before Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was due to meet President Bush in Washington.
Local Palestinian residents said at least two dozen tanks, armored personnel carriers and jeeps thrust into the West Bank city of Ramallah shortly before dawn, covered by helicopters hovering overhead and bursts of machinegun fire.
A Palestinian policeman was killed by Israeli gunfire during the raid, Palestinian security sources said.
Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo said Arafat was in the compound but was safe. Israel has repeatedly said it does not intend to harm the Palestinian leader.
"Arafat is inside the compound and he is unhurt," Abed Rabbo told Reuters.
Residents said armored Israeli bulldozers were destroying the ruins of buildings damaged in a similar Israeli raid last week that was launched after a Palestinian suicide bomber killed 17 people, including 13 soldiers, on a civilian bus.
An Israeli military source confirmed there was an operation underway in Ramallah and said it was aimed at "arresting militants and destroying the terror infrastructure."
The source said the operation would be "limited in duration" and was similar to numerous other Israeli raids into Palestinian ruled cities which have taken place on an almost daily basis.
PALESTINIAN CABINET SHAKEUP
Abed Rabbo accused Israel of trying to undermine the Palestinian Authority at a time it was undertaking new reforms.
"This operation is underway while Sharon resumes his visit to Washington. This shows that the U.S. administration supports this occupation and operation," Abed Rabbo told Reuters.
"Is that the message from Washington, that Israel should abort the reform campaign and the new government before it even starts it?"
The Israeli incursion took place shortly after Yasser Arafat showed signs of trying to placate the United States by announcing a shakeup of his cabinet and ordering his security forces to arrest a leader of the militant Islamic Jihad group, which was behind last week's suicide bombing.
The Palestinian leader pared his cabinet from 31 ministers to 21 on Sunday, put a cabinet minister in charge of security forces and ordered his police to arrest a leader of the Islamic Jihad group behind last week's suicide attack on an Israeli bus.
Washington had demanded the Palestinian president reform his administration and rein in militants.
As part of the shakeup, Arafat appointed a new Interior Minister, General Abdel-Razzaq al-Yahya, to head a streamlined security force made up of often rival security agencies.
Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo told reporters the move was to "prevent an overlap." He said the new cabinet, which included five new ministers and several merged portfolios, would hold its first session on Monday.
Arafat's measures preceded Sharon's White House talks with President Bush, in which the Israeli leader was expected to air his view that Palestinian attacks against Israel must stop before peace negotiations could resume.
Bush has repeatedly expressed his disappointment in Arafat and demanded the Palestinian leader implement sweeping reforms in the Palestinian Authority and clamp down on militants behind a suicide bombing campaign against Israel.
In Gaza, around 40 Palestinians were wounded, eight seriously, and eight houses damaged by an unexplained explosion inside a house in the Jabaliya refugee camp early on Monday, Palestinian residents and security sources said.
Palestinian police made a high profile arrest of Islamic Jihad leader Sheikh Abdallah Shami on Sunday in the Gaza Strip along with 14 other members of the militant group behind last weeks suicide bombing of a bus which killed 17 Israelis.
Shami, who has been arrested and released by Palestinian security forces several times, was detained in Gaza City.
The militant Hamas group called the cabinet changes superficial and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine group expressed skepticism and demanded a date for promised presidential and parliamentary elections.
Israel received the news coolly.
"If we see fundamental change in the behavior of the Palestinian security forces in which they intercept the attacks against Israel and not collaborate with them, we'll know that something big has occurred," Dore Gold, an adviser to Sharon, told Reuters.
SHARON SAYS NO NEGOTIATIONS UNDER FIRE
Sharon will be holding his sixth round of talks with Bush since the right-wing Israeli leader took office in March 2001. Bush has never held talks with Arafat.
"Israel must defeat terrorism; it cannot negotiate under fire. Israel has made painful concessions for peace before and will demonstrate diplomatic flexibility to make peace again," Sharon wrote in the New York Times on Sunday.
In his article, Sharon accused the Palestinian leadership of lacking an "elementary commitment to permanently renouncing violence in the resolution of political differences."
Shortly before Sharon departed for the United States on Saturday, two Palestinian gunmen infiltrated a Jewish settlement in the West Bank and killed a pregnant woman, her husband and a reserve soldier guarding the settlement. One of the gunman was killed by Israeli soldiers.
Palestinian militants also wounded five soldiers in an attempted incursion of a settlement in the northern West Bank on Saturday and militants in Gaza tried to carry out similar attacks in the Gaza Strip. Five Palestinian gunmen were killed in the attacks against settlements at the weekend.
Bush held talks with President Hosni Mubarak ( news - web sites) over the weekend at Camp David but rebuffed the Egyptian leader's call to support a declaration of Palestinian statehood early next year.
Their meeting was the latest diplomacy aimed at reviving peacemaking and halting violence that has killed nearly 1,900 people since the Palestinian uprising began in September 2000.
"Arafat is inside the compound and he is unhurt,"
who cares, do they think we really care?
The next headline i wanna see is Arafat found dead from apparent "heart attack" he was scared to death..
thanks for the post blam
Will Arafat listen?
And if he doesn't, will Israel really move, or just put him in isolation again?
Ariel Sharon: "Don't look at me like that....I did'nt do anything"!
No you twit. The message is that Israel doesn't give a rats ass what you say or do, until you stop attacking her citizens. Do you honestly think Israel will stop working to tear up the terror infrastructure so you guys can get your ducks in a row? As long as the war goes on, the war will go on. Get it?
Nothing like a little bit of hyperbole. I believe this is only the second meeting between Sharon and Bush in Washington. "Half a dozen" seems like quite the exageration.
The IDF is one of the best military forces in the world, why one of their snipers hasn't dropped this guy is beyond me.
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