Sharon announces new Israeli buffer zones
Israel continues stepped-up attacks
February 21, 2002 Posted: 2:15 PM EST (1915 GMT)
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JERUSALEM (CNN) -- Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Thursday that Israel would create new buffer zones along its borders. The announcement came as Israel launched attacks against Palestinian targets,
"In order to increase the security of Israeli subjects, we have decided to set up buffer zones in order to achieve security … and to set up obstacles along the border zones," Sharon said during a televised speech. "We all want peace we all are committed to peace."
When pressed by reporters, Sharon provided few details of the buffer zones.
Just prior to Sharon's address to the nation, Israeli forces launched strikes in Gaza against Palestinian targets in Rafah and Gaza City, the Israel Defense Forces said.
The IDF said a building used by military intelligence and Force 17, the elite guard corps for Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, was hit in Rafah. Arafat was in Ramallah in the West Bank and was not harmed. The IDF said the Palestinian naval police headquarters was hit in Gaza City.
The latest strikes followed earlier Israeli helicopter gunship attacks at Palestinian Authority facilities in Gaza and the West Bank, while tanks and troops entered Gaza, clashing with Palestinian gunmen. Five Palestinians were killed in a firefight in the Gaza city of Rafah, the Palestinian sources said.
The offensive comes in response to what Israeli officials are now calling a "guerrilla war" against Israel by the Palestinians. A surge of Palestinian attacks that began with the suicide bombing of a West Bank pizzeria Saturday culminated Tuesday with an ambush at a military checkpoint that left six Israeli soldiers dead.
Arafat also told a news conference the Palestinian Authority "remains committed" to a unilateral cease-fire he declared December 16.
Meanwhile, three members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine -- which claimed responsibility for the assassination last year of an Israeli Cabinet member -- were arrested Thursday, Palestinian security officials said.
After Sharon's expected address to the nation on Thursday, reporters will be allowed to question him. Wednesday night, in an address to the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations in Jerusalem, Sharon said: "We are at war, and while we are taking all the necessary steps against terror, we are also doing everything not to escalate the situation."
Sources inside the Israeli government said Wednesday they believe Palestinians are waging a "full-scale guerrilla war" with Israel.
The Palestinian Authority said: "The Sharon government and its occupation forces continued their aggressive bloody campaign against the Palestinian people" with its raids Wednesday and Thursday.
In Thursday's violence, Israeli helicopter gunships struck security and police targets in Gaza and the West Bank. The IDF said its troops struck the Palestinian police headquarters in Nablus, an office of Force 17 in Ramallah, and a military, intelligence and Force 17 compound in Rafah. Force 17 is Arafat's elite security guard.
In addition, Israeli troops and tanks entered an area of Gaza City from two directions, exchanging fire with residents in the deepest incursion there by Israelis in the past 17 months of violence, Palestinian sources said. Israeli forces blew up a television transmission tower in Gaza, knocking Palestinian radio and television stations off the air.
The Rafah firefight, in which five Palestinians were killed, was described by the IDF as an attempt to halt an arms-smuggling operation.
The men arrested by Palestinian security forces are said to be suspects in the assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rechavam Ze'evi last October. Arrested were Basel Asmar, Hamdi Koran and Ahed Abu Gholmi. Gholmi is the head of the PFLP military wing. The early morning raid on a house in Nablus came on direct orders from Arafat, Palestinian security officials said.
Israeli security officials said they believed the Palestinian Authority did have the suspects in custody. However, those Israeli sources said the arrests are not enough and Arafat's compound will remain ringed by Israeli tanks until the suspects and the leadership of the PFLP are put on trial.
Israel has cited the failure of Palestinian officials to make arrests in the case as the main reason they have limited Arafa's movements to the compound in the West Bank town of Ramallah, which is surrounded by Israeli tanks.
The PFLP is a Palestinian militant group that has committed numerous international terrorist attacks and has conducted attacks against Israeli or moderate Arab targets, according to the U.S. State Department. The group rejects anything less than a total Israeli withdrawal from lands occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem.