Israel raided two West Bank refugee camps Thursday, shelled Palestinian police positions and fired missiles at Yasser Arafat's headquarters as he met there with the European Union's Mideast envoy. The blast blew out windows in the room where the two met moments before.
Eight Palestinians were killed and more than 20 injured in the fighting.
Also Thursday, a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up in a supermarket at the entrance to a Jewish settlement in the West Bank, killing himself and wounding four bystanders, just hours after another bombing was thwarted in the heart of Jerusalem.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon defended Israel's stepped up military strikes against unprecedented criticism from the Bush administration, which until now had said Israel had the right to defend itself against attacks by Palestinian militants.
Referring to Sharon's statements this week that force would replace diplomacy and that Israel would strike relentlessly to crush Palestinian militants, Secretary of State Colin Powell told a Congressional committee on Wednesday: "If you declare war on the Palestinians and think you can solve the problem by seeing how many Palestinians can be killed, I don't know that leads us anywhere."
Sharon's office said Israel has not declared war on the Palestinians and that the conflict "was imposed on Israel by the Palestinian Authority and its leader."
Powell on Thursday pulled back from his rebuke of Sharon, saying that the Israeli leader was "reasonable" in wanting to reduce violence before making peace moves.
Powell told the House Budget Committee that Israel was faced with a legitimate self-defense situation but "they have to be very careful with the means they use to defend their people."
A defiant Arafat, meanwhile, said Palestinians would not be cowed by the intensifying Israeli strikes.
"No one can shake the Palestinians," he told reporters in the West Bank town of Ramallah. "If the Israelis believe that they can frighten them by tanks or by missiles or by Apaches (helicopter gunships), then they are mistaken."
In Washington, President Bush decided to send mediator Anthony Zinni back to the region, the Associated Press reported. The White House made the decision after Bush's national security team advised that the action could help end the violence, a senior administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
In new Palestinian violence, a suicide bomber blew himself up Thursday in a supermarket at the entrance to the Ariel settlement, the West Bank's second largest. One of the four wounded bystanders was in serious condition. In a phone call to The Associated Press, a radical PLO group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, claimed responsibility.
Just several hours earlier, a Palestinian carrying a bag of explosives was pushed out of a cafe in a trendy neighborhood of Jerusalem, and police said he had planned to carry out an attack there.
Sharon ordered the military strikes after more than two dozen Israelis were killed last weekend in a string of Palestinian attacks. The prime minister has come under sharp attack at home for not offering Israelis a way out of their malaise. The past week has been one of the bloodiest in 17 months of fighting, with 80 Palestinians and 31 Israelis killed.
A key target in the new Israeli campaign has been Arafat's compound in Ramallah, to which he has been confined since December. Israeli helicopter gunships fired missiles at the complex for three straight nights, including late Wednesday, when two rockets struck several minutes apart.
At the time, Arafat was meeting in his office with Miguel Moratinos, the EU envoy to the Middle East. "We don't know where it hit, but it was very, very close," said the envoy's spokesman, Javier Sancho. The lights went out and the EU delegation was escorted out by flashlight, Sancho said.
Arafat adviser Ahmed Abdel Rahman said that the windows were blown out in the room where Arafat and Moratinos had met just moments before.
Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres was speaking to Arafat by phone at the time of the air strike, Arafat's advisers said. Arafat held out the phone and told Peres "Do you hear this?" when one of the missiles hit, the aides said. Peres, who has been saying publicly that force alone cannot bring about a resolution, declined comment Thursday.
In the West Bank, about 80 tanks and armored vehicles entered the town of Tulkarem and surrounded the adjacent refugee camps of Tulkarem and Nur Shams, meeting resistance from dozens of Palestinian gunmen, witnesses said.
In the Tulkarem camp, Israeli troops seized a U.N.-run school as a command post, said Hamdi Dardouk, the Palestinian intelligence chief in Tulkarem.
Five armed Palestinians were killed in the fighting, doctors said.
In the West Bank village of Siris, Israeli forces killed a leader of the militant Islamic Jihad, Mohammed Anani, 27, who tried to shoot at soldiers as they approached his home, witnesses said. Anani had been wanted by Israel for involvement in suicide bombings and had served time in Palestinian jails.
Also Thursday, Israeli warplanes fired missiles at the Palestinian government complex in Bethlehem and the police headquarters in Gaza City. The Gaza City complex had been hit many times before. After Thursday's strike, only two of 25 buildings in the compound remained standing. The missiles sent rubble and glass flying hundreds of yards, and eight people were wounded. Children at a nearby school ran from the area.
Two Palestinians were killed in gun battles with Israeli troops in central and northern Gaza on Thursday, Palestinian doctors said. Two other Palestinians were shot dead by Israeli troops late Wednesday as they tried to lay explosives, the army said.
Also Thursday, Israeli gunboats fired missiles at a Palestinian police roadblock near the Gaza City coast and wounded 13 policemen, three critically, Palestinian security officials said. Other gunboats fired at Arafat's seaside office. The Israeli military said its forces attacked "terrorist targets" including a police post.
Throughout the Gaza Strip, Palestinian police closed roads around security installations Thursday and evacuated schools and government ministries for fear of more air strikes.
(China Daily March 8, 2002)
