A rchive Date
[ 29-03-2002 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Israel ]
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[http://canoe.ca/CNEWSTopNews/mideast_mar28-ap.html
Israel ponders retaliation
By KARIN LAUB-- Associated Press
Thursday, March 28, 2002
JERUSALEM (AP) - Israel's defense minister met with army commanders Thursday amid growing calls for massive retaliation for a Palestinian suicide bombing in a hotel banquet hall that killed 20 diners, many elderly, and wounded 130 at the start of the Jewish Passover holiday.
In response to one of the deadliest attacks in the current round of fighting, Israel said it would exercise its right to self defense, but stopped short of formally abandoning U.S.-backed truce efforts.
In anticipation of a possible Israeli strike, Palestinian government offices were evacuated in the West Bank. In the town of Ramallah, Yasser Arafat's West Bank headquarters, worried parents took their children home early from school and residents stocked up on food in expectation of a long Israeli blockade.
Despite the new bloodshed, U.S. truce envoy Anthony Zinni pressed on with his mission to seek a truce. On Thursday, U.S. officials said the envoy was awaiting a speedy Palestinian response to a revised proposal he had presented a day earlier, before the bomb attack. Israel has already accepted Zinni's proposal for a truce timetable, with some reservations. Zinni aborted two previous visits because of spiraling violence.
The Palestinian Authority said it "strongly condemned" Wednesday night's bombing at the hotel in the Mediterranean resort of Netanya, carried out by a member of the Islamic militant Hamas group. Arafat met with his security chiefs and ordered the arrests of key militants from Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, a militia linked to his Fatah movement.
In Wednesday's attack, 25-year-old Abdel Baset Odeh, a Hamas member, walked into the Park Hotel in Netanya at about 7:15 p.m., just as about 250 guests dressed in their holiday best were sitting down in the banquet hall for the Passover Seder.
Odeh knew the area well; before he became wanted by Israel, he had worked in several Netanya hotels, Palestinian security officials said. The attacker got past an armed security guard posted in the lobby, walked into the banquet hall and detonated explosives strapped packed with nails and ball bearings for greater deadliness.
The blast blew out windows and walls, overturned tables and cut electricity, plunging the hotel into eerie darkness. One elderly witness, who gave only his last name, Breyer, said he was speaking to a guest next to him at the time. "We talked. We heard the boom," Breyer told Israel Radio. "He (the other guest) and his wife and two children flew in the air, with the wall."
Another guest, 70-year-old Yitzhak, said that as he and his wife fled the inferno in the darkness, he called out to a wounded woman. Yitzhak, who did not give a last name, said he offered to help the woman get up. "How can you help me?" he recalled her saying. "I don't have any legs."
Hotel employees said many of the guests were elderly. In all, 20 guests and the bomber were killed. Police said a Swedish woman and several other European tourists were among the dead. By Thursday, five bodies remained unclaimed, and three victims were so badly disfigured that pathologists asked relatives for DNA samples. Eighty-one people remained hospitalized, including 23 who were in serious condition.
In the deadliest Palestinian attack during the current conflict, 22 young Israelis were killed when a Hamas suicide bomber blew himself up at the entrance to a Tel Aviv disco last June.
As Israel mulled its response to the bombing, Arab leaders gathered at a summit in Beirut agreed on a new, unified stand toward Israel, offering "normal relations" in exchange for a return of the territories Israel occupied in the 1967 Mideast war, the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital and a fair solution for Palestinian refugees.
Raanan Gissin, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said the Arab offer was "a very interesting development, something that should be pursued." Gissin said Arab states should now enter into direct negotiations with Israel, perhaps at a follow-up conference to the Beirut gathering.
A Hamas spokesman, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, said the bombing was not an attempt to derail the summit or Zinni's mission, but part of an ongoing campaign against Israel. The group is pledged to Israel's destruction.
Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer consulted with army chiefs Thursday, and the security Cabinet was to meet later in the day to decide on possible retaliation. Zinni's current mission survived two suicide bombings last week, but Israel has said it could not tolerate further attacks on its civilians.
Gissin said Israel has made it clear to the United States that it reserved the right to retaliate harshly if Palestinians carried out a major terror attack during cease-fire talks. "This is the massacre of Passover," Gissin said of the Netanya bombing. "Israel will have the full right to self defense and will use appropriate measures to punish all those who perpetrated and assisted in this attack."
The Netanya bombing was widely seen as a watershed because of its deadliness and timing. "They attacked innocent Israelis on one of the most sacred nights to Jewish people, Passover," said Gideon Meir, an Israeli government spokesman. With public outrage reaching an unprecedented level, it appeared increasingly difficult for Sharon to accede to U.S. calls for restraint.
Earlier this week, key Cabinet ministers discussed various options in the event cease-fire talks collapsed, including a large-scale military operation. Education Minister Limor Livnat, said Israel must reconquer much of the West Bank and Gaza Strip for an extended period. "The problem is that the Palestinian Authority is a terrorist entity, that has declared war on the citizens of Israel," Livnat said. "It is our obligation ... to topple this evil regime."
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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