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Arafat Races#133; Bush DEBKAfile Special Analysis 5 March: Tuesday, between 02:15 and 09:00 hours Israel time, Palestinian terrorists slew 5 Israelis and injured 63 in attacks in Tel Aviv, Afula and the Tunnel Road leading out of Jerusalem. Each time the level of bloodshed hits a new and intolerable high #150; as it did last Saturday and Sunday #150; it gets worse. By upping the pace of terror attacks and killing more Israelis, Arafat is throwing a gauntlet at the feet of US president George W. Bush - namely, he will prove he can topple Ariel Sharon before the Americans...

About-turn as Bush tries to keep consensus The decision to dispatch the US special envoy General Anthony Zinni to the Middle East was the price Washington was forced to pay for the tacit compliance of its Arab allies with an eventual offensive on Iraq, diplomats and analysts said yesterday. President George Bush and vice-president Dick Cheney resisted calls from the Arab world and from US secretary of state, Colin Powell, for direct intervention in the Middle East conflict until an unheralded about-turn on Thursday. The White House believed that sending the retired marine general to the Middle East for the...

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon plans to drop his demand for seven days of calm which he had set as condition for putting in motion a U.S.-brokered truce-to-talks deal, government sources said on Friday. Sharon told Secretary of State Colin Powell of his change in position in a telephone call ahead of the return to the region next week of Washington's Middle East envoy, Anthony Zinni, the sources said. "Sharon is willing to drop the condition of seven days of quiet that was agreed with the Americans a few months ago and is willing to discuss implementation ...

(March 8) - In his address to the nation two weeks ago, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced plans to construct a security buffer zone to block the infiltration of suicide bombers. Previous leaders, including Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, considered similar ideas, but Sharon's concept is more developed, including concrete walls, electronic fences, and trenches. The emphasis on separation also reflects the mood of a wide range of Israeli public opinion. Polls, talk-show discussions, and debates within the political parties repeat the demand for physical barriers. The remaining members of Peace Now have replaced the old slogans with calls ...

The IDF responded aggressively by attacking Palestinian targets throughout Gaza, Judea, and Samaria. Armored forces, covered by combat helicopters, entered the outskirts of Bethlehem from several directions and took over the neighborhoods originally founded for refugees that have since become terrorist strongholds. IDF troops entered Beit Jala, from where fire is often directed at homes in Jerusalem's Gilo neighborhood, and tanks approached the town as well. Among the some two-dozen Arabs reported killed in the various offensives was one terrorist eliminated in a helicopter-missile strike. In Khan Yunis, Gaza, IDF forces killed about ten of Muhammad Dahlan's forces, including Gen. ...

NABLUS, West Bank (Reuters) - Dozens of armed Jewish settlers rampaged in a West Bank village Friday, injuring four Palestinians and damaging the local mosque and clinic, residents said. Settlers entered the village in about 25 vehicles and began firing randomly at Palestinian homes and buildings in the village of Huwara, south of Nablus. Israeli police said earlier that police officers and soldiers scuffled with the settlers who burst into the village to take revenge after Palestinian gunmen seriously wounded a settler in a shooting near Huwara Thursday. Israel Radio said later the rampage ended after police detained several settlers ...

Secretary of State Colin Powell's outrageous accusation that Israel's policy is to "see how many Palestinians can be killed" was no off-the-cuff remark. It was included in a prepared statement, and it was part of the State Department's strategy of trying to appease the Arab world by pressuring Israel to refrain from fighting back forcefully against Palestinian Arab terrorism. Incredibly, despite Arafat's eighteen month-long terrorist war against Israel, the State Department still sees him as a partner for peace. Secretary Powell said in Congressional testimony on March 6, 2002: "Prime Minister Sharon has to take a hard look at ...

Terrorist kills five teens in Gaza attack By Margot Dudkevitch March, 08 2002 JERUSALEM (March 8) - Five Israeli teens were killed and 23 others wounded when a Palestinian terrorist infiltrated the settlement of Atzmona in the Gaza Strip just before midnight. The terrorist opened fire in all directions and threw grenades, before being shot dead by soldiers. The wounded were taken to Soroka Hospital in Beersheba, where four were listed in serious condition and six others sustained moderate wounds, Magen David Adom said. Most of the others were treated for shock. The names of four of the dead, ...

BEIRUT, March 8 (Reuters) - The European Union urged Arab rulers on Friday to accept at a summit this month a Saudi peace plan offering Arab recognition of Israel in return for its withdrawal from Arab land seized in the 1967 Middle East war. The appeal was made by European Union Middle East peace envoy Miguel Angel Moratinos in talks with Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri of Lebanon, which is hosting the March 27-28 summit in Beirut. "I think it comes at a very timely moment. We hope that it will be adopted at the Beirut summit," Moratinos said of ...

<p>March 8, 2002 -- The Bush administration's frustration with the growing death toll in the Middle East is understandable. But Secretary of State Colin Powell's harsh criticism of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's tough strike-back policy is both surprising and shortsighted.</p>

<p>Israeli leader Ariel Sharon calls it war. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat calls it the intifada. The grief and rage experienced by those who watched their loved ones killed this week in Israel and the Palestinian territories knows no language. For the six Israeli children killed among the crowd of Orthodox Jews returning from prayers over the weekend, for the more than 30 Palestinian students injured in two bombings on Palestinian schools this week, there is little justice that can be done on this Earth.</p>

<p>Now here's a mystery: The Israeli secret services, the Mossad and the Shin Bet, have a tremendous reputation of knowing everything about Israel's enemies and stopping their conspiracies pre-emptively. On occasion they miss. They missed the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, for instance, but they knew all about Iraq's Osirak reactor which the Israeli air force took out in 1981 and thus made possible the Gulf War victory. How many other successful Mossad-Shin Bet pre-emptive strikes there have been over the half-century of Israel's existence we cannot know, but there have been plenty.</p>

<p>March 8, 2002 -- JERUSALEM - An Israeli raid early yesterday killed one of the Palestinian's highest-ranking leaders, officials confirmed.</p> <p>Maj. Gen. Ahmed Mefraj, 55, a top security commander was shot dead during a sweep into villages east of Khan Younis.</p>

JERUSALEM, Mar 08, 2002 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- Twenty Palestinians, including a top commander, were killed in Israeli raids before daybreak Friday in the West Bank and Gaza, after a Palestinian gunman infiltrated into a Jewish settlement in Gaza and killed five Israelis, one of the bloodiest days in 17 months of fighting. The violence surged again just as U.S. President George W. Bush said he was sending an envoy back to the region to try to stop ever-escalating violence. Eighteen Palestinians died in two Israeli attacks in Gaza, including Maj. Gen. Ahmed Mefraj, deputy commander of public ...

GAZA, Mar 07, 2002 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- A high-ranking Palestinian security official was killed early Friday in southern Gaza as Israeli armed forces continued a ferocious assault on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. General Abu Hemeid Al Mari, commander of the Palestinian Authority public security in the southern Gaza Strip, and three bodyguards were killed by Israeli gunfire near Abasan, Palestinian security sources and eyewitnesses said. Abu Hemeid is the first high-level Palestinian security official to be killed by Israeli troops during the now 17-month-old intifada. Two emergency workers, a United Nations nurse and a ...

Gaza, Mar 08, 2002 (EFE via COMTEX) -- The three bodyguards who were accompanying Gen. Abu Hemeid Al-Masri, an assistant to the public security chief for the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) in the southern Gaza Strip, died together with their commander on Friday, when Israeli soldiers fired on them. Palestinian security officials said that Al-Masri, 62, who was the assistant to Abdel Razaq al-Makhaida, the head of PNA public security, died as he was trying to prevent his forces from confronting advancing Israeli soldiers at midnight on Thursday. The general, the highest Palestinian official to be killed in the ...

JERUSALEM - There is a way out of the Israeli-Palestinian maelstrom. If Saudi Arabia's Middle East peace initiative is carefully nurtured, analysts say, it could provide a viable framework for peacemaking. But its success depends on the kind of support the initiative receives from Arab states, the US government, and Israel's "peace camp" - those who favor a negotiated solution with the Palestinians. No one is sanguine about all these elements coming together, but the three-week-old initiative is maintaining at least some momentum. President Bush and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak discussed the idea in Washington this week, Arab foreign ...

TownHall.com: Conservative Columnists: Mona CharenQUICK LINKS: HOME | NEWS | OPINION | RIGHTPAGES | CHAT | WHAT'S NEWtownhall.comMona Charen (back to story)March 8, 2002Flawed premise Imagine for a moment that all reporting about the U.S. war on terrorism was presented without reference to Sept. 11. American attacks from the air using B-52s and F-16s against fighters armed with smaller weapons would seem quite disproportionate. Our stated intention to kill as many members of Al Qaeda as possible might be condemned, by our own Department of State, as "excessive" and "contributing to the cycle of violence." But U.S. actions are ...

GAZA (Reuters) - Israeli forces killed a top Palestinian commander in a fierce new military offensive on Friday after a Palestinian gunman went on a shooting rampage in a Jewish settlement. The violence, in which five Israelis at the settlement and 15 Palestinians were killed, added urgency to a new U.S. peace drive under which President Bush said he was sending Middle East envoy Anthony Zinni to the region to seek a truce. "I am deeply concerned about the tragic loss of life and escalating violence in the Middle East," Bush said in Washington Thursday. "There are no assurances (of ...

President to Send Envoy to Mideast for Peace Talks By TODD S. PURDUM ASHINGTON, March 7 &#0151; Under pressure from Arab allies, President Bush announced today that his special envoy, Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, would return to the Middle East next week in an effort to end the mounting Israeli-Palestinian violence. "There are no assurances," Mr. Bush said, that General Zinni will be able to broker a cease-fire or the resumption of peace talks. But, he added, "that is not going to prevent our government from trying." He spoke this afternoon in a surprise appearance in the White House ...