Israel hems Arafat in compound again

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Using dynamite and bulldozers, Israeli forces on Friday flattened much of what remained of Yasser Arafat's headquarters compound and left the Palestinian leader trapped on a single floor of his office building, which was raked with machine-gun fire and struck by at least one tank shell.

The assault, which continued into today, was intended to physically and politically isolate the Palestinian Authority president following two suicide attacks this week on Israelis.

Moving systematically, troops destroyed a few remaining ancillary buildings before focusing their attention on the core of the Ramallah complex. After knocking down a second-story pedestrian bridge that connected Arafat's office to a building that houses many of his guards, soldiers destroyed the stairwell in his building -- leaving the Palestinian leader unable to go up, down or out.

Dozens of Arafat's guards and assistants surrendered during the assault, which the Israelis said was aimed at arresting 20 men wanted for alleged terrorism. The wanted men did not appear to be among those who emerged.

About midnight, Israeli gunners opened up on Arafat's building, strafing it with tracer bullets. One shell fired by a tank hit the floor above the Palestinian Authority president.

Gen. Ruth Yaron, a spokeswoman for the Israeli Defense Forces, said those were "warning shots" designed to flush out the wanted men. "This is putting pressure on terrorists who are sending suicide bombers into the streets of Tel Aviv," she told CNN.

Palestinian officials insisted that they had not received an official request for the men. Nabil abu Rudaineh, an Arafat spokesman, enied having heard demands that Israeli soldiers had issued over loudspeakers.

"I think they were talking to themselves," he said in a telephone interview from within the compound. "Nobody here was listening."

Among those being sought was Tawfik Tirawi, the Palestinian intelligence chief in the West Bank.

The siege left Arafat once again a virtual prisoner in his quarters, confined to the only building left standing in what was an extensive government compound. Adding to the sense that he was at the mercy of the occupying troops, Palestinian officials said an Israeli sniper shot and killed one of his bodyguards Friday morning through a window of the headquarters.

Arafat was said to be unharmed. He has been confined to the Ramallah compound almost continuously since last December, enduring challenges not only from the Israeli army but from within his own ranks.

"He is used to this sort of horrible life," said Rudaineh.

The events of the past few days have shattered the fragile hopes of many that two years of unremitting violence might finally give way to at least a tentative peace. Israeli and Palestinian officials had been participating in U.N.-sponsored talks in New York when a suicide bombing Wednesday ended a six-week lull in such attacks on Israeli civilians.

That was followed Thursday by another attack, aboard a bus on a crowded Tel Aviv street. A 19-year-old Scot, Jonathan Jesner of Glasgow, died Friday from wounds suffered in that assault, bringing the death toll to seven, including the bomber.

Israeli tanks surrounded and then entered Arafat's compound within hours of the Tel Aviv bombing. Early Friday, the Israeli forces destroyed 11 trailers that housed some of Arafat's staff and set off an explosion that leveled the tattered remains of an intelligence headquarters next to Arafat's office.

As billows of white smoke and dust engulfed and rose over the compound, shock waves rocked walls and rattled windows throughout much of Ramallah, a hilly city of 25,000 people just north of Jerusalem.

Shortly after noon, a blast took down another building in the compound. A short time later, two Israeli army bulldozers and an excavator could be seen finishing the job.

After Israeli troops destroyed the pedestrian bridge late Friday night, they ordered Palestinians in the building opposite Arafat's to surrender. More than 20 came out. The building in which they had been housed was then at least partially torn down. It contained a conference hall where Arafat had delivered a speech to the Palestinian Legislative Council last week.

In the Gaza Strip, meanwhile, Israeli tanks on Friday drove nearly to the center of Gaza City, the deepest incursion there since Israel handed administrative control to the Palestinian Authority in 1994. Israeli forces destroyed several metal shops that they said were being used as weapons factories but which Palestinians said made car brakes and window frames.

Two Palestinians were killed: a 35-year-old man, Ahmad Loubad, who was described by officials and acquaintances as mentally disabled, and a 25-year-old woman. In the town of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, a 14-year-old Palestinian boy was reported shot to death late Friday, apparently by Israeli soldiers. A 20-year-old Palestinian man also reportedly was slain.

Although Arafat shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 with two Israeli leaders, many in Israel regard him as an unreconstructed terrorist. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has made it clear that he distrusts the Palestinian leader and is unwilling to deal directly with him.

Sharon's troops have kept Arafat under siege on and off for months, damaging much of his headquarters compound, and Sharon declared Thursday that he intended the latest assault to further isolate the Palestinian president. Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer stressed Friday that Israel had no intention of deporting Arafat, as some expected.

"We have no intention of expelling him or firing at him," Ben-Eliezer said. "We want to isolate him."

Rudaineh insisted Friday that Arafat, far from isolated, had spent the day on the telephone with a long list of world leaders, including President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and King Abdullah II of Jordan.

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