Israeli troops charged into Yasir Arafat's command compound in Ramallah before dawn Thursday in a fierce six-hour attack that killed two people, sent a tank shell through his bathroom, left half a dozen buildings in ruins and the aging, battered Palestinian leader's position more shaky then ever.
The Israeli attack was a reprisal for a suicide car bombing attack on Wednesday on a bus by Islamic Jihad that killed 17 Israelis - mostly young soldiers on the way back to their bases - and it was swift and hard.
American officials were not notified in advance of the attack, according to a number of diplomatic officials in the region. While it appeared of a pattern with Mr. Sharon's oft-rash endeavors throughout his military career, it also came at a low point for Mr. Arafat, bashed not only by Mr. Sharon, but by his own people for the failure of the Oslo pact and corruption in his administration.
About 30 military vehicles - tanks, armored personnel carriers and armored bulldozers - stormed into the compound a little after two o'clock in the morning, according to accounts from both sides. By 8 a.m., the Israelis pulled out, leaving behind an impressive scene of destruction.
The raid came as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, for decades Mr. Arafat's visceral foe, prepared to visit President George Bush next week, gaining the last word in the president's ear after the visit of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
Whole buildings were pancaked flat, including those belonging to mukhaberat, the intelligence apparatus, some barracks for various military or security services, a jail, and even the offices of the local governor, Abu Fares.
After the Israelis pulled out, Mr. Arafat emerged defiant, nearly carried by bodyguards over a pile of a wrecked car and bulldozed dirt and chunks of stones that were the entrance to his one-impressive headquarters, a British-mandate area police station, now a wreck.
"This will only increase the steadfastness of the Palestinian people," he said in a scrum of television and other journalists, in what has now become boilerplate. "I invite the international community to come and see what is fascism and blatant racism."
(China Daily June 7, 2002)
