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Israel Launches New
Offensive Into Nablus

11-13-2


NABLUS, West Bank (Reuters) - Dozens of Israeli tanks backed by helicopter gunships swept into the West Bank city of Nablus Wednesday in a stepped-up military response to a Palestinian attack that killed five Israelis on a kibbutz.
 
Witnesses said Israeli forces entered the Palestinian-ruled city from four directions under cover of darkness, with tank-mounted machineguns firing in the air as they advanced. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
 
The large-scale incursion, which could further complicate a new U.S. peace mission to the region, was launched just 24 hours after Israel troops and armor raided the town of Tulkarm and an adjacent refugee camp.
 
Israel had vowed tough retaliation for Sunday's shooting spree at a nearby communal farm, Kibbutz Metzer, in northern Israel, where the dead included a mother and her two young sons killed as they cowered under their blankets.
 
The army said in a statement that it had commenced an operation "against terrorist targets" in Nablus and its surrounding refugee camps, as well as the town of Bir Zeit north of Ramallah.
 
It said troops had so far arrested 30 wanted militants, mostly from the Islamic group Hamas, "due to the high number of warnings and attempts to carry out attacks" against Israelis in a two-year-old Palestinian uprising against occupation.
 
The Israeli army has held a tight grip on Nablus and most other major West Bank cities following a wave of suicide bombings last summer, but the reoccupation of Palestinian-ruled territory has so far failed to put a complete stop to attacks.
 
Israeli security sources said Tulkarm and Nablus were now being targeted because they had suspected links to Sunday's kibbutz raid, which was claimed by an armed group linked to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.
 
Israeli Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, trying to outflank Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on the right, vowed on Tuesday to expel Arafat if he were elected prime minister.
 
The hawkish ex-premier, challenging Sharon to lead the rightist Likud party in a January 28 election, turned a nationally televised speech into his most scathing attack on Arafat since joining Israel's cabinet last week after the collapse of a unity coalition.
 
"The first thing that must be done in the next government is to expel this man," Netanyahu told a Likud convention in Tel Aviv. "I as prime minister will expel Arafat...I think this is an essential condition to wipe out terror."
 
Recent polls have given Sharon a commanding lead over the center-left Labor Party for the general election and up to a 10-point margin over Netanyahu for the party leadership in a primary set for November 28.
 
Netanyahu said Arafat was "head of the murderers" behind the rare kibbutz attack. Arafat condemned the shooting. He has repeatedly denied Israeli accusations of complicity in violence.
 
GAZA AIR STRIKE
 
Shortly before the incursion, an Israeli helicopter gunship fired missiles into Gaza City, hitting a metal workshop which had been badly damaged in a similar strike two days earlier.
 
An army spokesman said the strike was a "continuation of our operation" against a site used to manufacture rockets and mortar shells fired at Jewish settlements and Israeli towns. The owner of the workshop had denied it was used to make arms.
 
The violence clouded a visit by U.S. envoy David Satterfield to push a peace "roadmap." Most in the region believe the plan will achieve little before Israel's election and before the smoke clears on a potential U.S. war on Iraq.
 
Just before Netanyahu spoke, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned Israel against forcing Arafat out of the West Bank. "Many governments around the world have indicated that it would be unwise to exile Chairman Arafat, and I hope that will not happen," he told a news conference in New York.
 
Sharon has promised Bush not to oust or harm Arafat.
 
Following Netanyahu to the podium, Sharon responded with what was widely seen as veiled criticism of his rival. Israeli commentators dubbed Sharon the victor of the exchange.
 
"We will fight terror and defeat it, but security will not be achieved through slogans," Sharon said. "The Israeli nation wants responsible leadership, leadership that acts with discretion."
 
Palestinian cabinet minister Saeb Erekat called Netanyahu's threat "unacceptable" and urged Israelis to elect a leadership "capable of making peace and not one that that will sustain the vicious cycle of violence and bloodshed."
 
At least 1,655 Palestinians and 631 Israelis have been killed since the revolt erupted in September 2000 after peace talks on Palestinian statehood froze.







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