A heavily armed Palestinian gunman killed six Israelis at a ballroom party in northern Israel late Thursday night, the first major attack on civilians inside Israel since Yasser Arafat declared a truce a month ago.
Israel instantly blamed Arafat for the attack, saying he had failed to dismantle armed extremist groups despite weeks of relative calm.
An armed offshoot of Arafat's Fatah movement claimed responsibility for the shooting attack in the northern town of Hadera, which has been the target of numerous attacks by Palestinians slipping into the community from the closeby West Bank.
The Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade said in a telephone call to AFP that one of their members, 24-year-old Abdelsalam Hasunah, from Beit Imrin to the north of Nablus, had carried out the attack.
"We are from the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade and we claim responsibility for the operation in Hadera which was revenge for our Tulkarem leader Raed al-Karmi," the caller said.
Karmi, 30, was killed on Monday in an explosion widely blamed on Israel, which has killed dozens of suspected Palestinian militants.
Police said the attacker on Thursday burst into a girl's Bat Mitzah first communion party spraying the revellers with gunfire.
A witness said the guests fought back, throwing beer bottles at the intruder but failing to stop his assault. As police burst in the Palestinian tried to lob a grenade but was gunned down before having time to pull the pin.
The United States condemned the attack as a "horrific act of terrorism" and called on Arafat to take immediate action against those responsible.
"The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms this horrific act of terrorism in Hadera, Israel," said Gregg Sullivan, spokesman for the State Department's Near Eastern Affairs bureau.
"Chairman Arafat must take immediate action against those responsible for these acts and confront the infrastructure that perpetuates terror and violence."
Israel blamed Arafat for the killing, saying the Palestinian leader had failed to dismantle the infrastructure of extremist armed groups.
"We hold Arafat and the Palestinian Authority responsible because we have asked and demanded and urged Arafat to do something against terrorist organisations and act against their infrastructure and he has not done that," government spokesman Arieh Meckel told AFP.
He said Arafat had merely made deals with radical groups for a temporary lull in violence to ease Israeli and international pressure on him.
Thursday night's shooting spree came just hours after the security cabinet ordered Israel forces to lock down Palestinian cities in the northern West Bank after a sharp rise in killings in recent days.
The army's deputy chief of staff, General Moshe Yahalon, was quoted by public radio earlier as saying his forces could be forced to return to sectors in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that were handed over to Palestinian self-rule under the 1993 Oslo peace accords.
The general said such a move could be taken because "Yasser Arafat uses terrorism to reach his goals."
Hemmed in by a tightening Israeli stranglehold, which triggered overnight exchanges of fire outside his Ramallah offices, Arafat is also facing increasing dissent among Palestinian hardliners.
His arrest, under Israeli pressure, of Ahmed Saadat, whose Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine killed an Israeli minister last October, drew howls of anger from radical groups who threatened to vent their rage on Israel.
The PFLP's armed wing, the Abu Ali Mustapha Brigades, issued a statement warning Palestinian security chiefs not to arrest any more militants.
The armed wing is named after the former PFLP leader whose killing by Israel last August triggered the revenge slaying of Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Zeevi.
The PFLP's political branch called for an urgent meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, of which the PFLP is one of the main factions, to discuss the arrest.
In the Gaza Strip, some 700 people demonstrated in protest against Saadat's arrest and said Arafat should resist Israeli and US pressure.
Israel has said Arafat cannot leave Ramallah until he arrests not just Saadat but also the two killers who shot Zeevi in a Jerusalem hotel in October.
Arafat met Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Pique in Ramallah, where Pique, representing the European Union, expressed his appreciation for Arafat's efforts to curb violence in the last month.
Pique then left for Syria, where Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said his country was "not pessimistic" about making peace with Israel.
Elsewhere, US House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt and a delegation of politicians visiting the region reflected increasing US frustration with Arafat by refusing to see him.
And US Assistant Secretary of State William Burns called off a stopover he had been provisionally scheduled to make in Israel amid the rising tensions, while Washington declined to give a date for the return of special envoy Anthony Zinni.
Israel has been on the lookout for an expected attack since an explosion killed Karmi, the Tulkarem leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. The death was widely blamed on Israel which tried to liquidate him last September for killing nine Israelis.
Karmi's death sparked a spate of gun attacks which left three Israelis and an Arab resident of annexed east Jerusalem dead.
A member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, an offshoot of Arafat's powerful Fatah movement, was killed in a firefight with Israeli forces near Nablus Wednesday night.
Thousands of Palestinians turned out for his funeral, crying for revenge.
(China Daily January 18, 2002)
