Israel warns that Palestinian commanders could be targeted; civilians increasingly singled out

Maj. Gen. Uzi Dayan, Prime Minister Ehud Barak's National Security Adviser, said the prime minister hoped Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat would meet a Monday night deadline to call an end to hostilities; if he didn't, Dayan warned, the army would change its footing. "It will take the characteristics of initiated action and not just reactive action," he told Israel radio. "We could ... as far as I am concerned, even attack the headquarters of those responsible for the situation." Barak said he no longer believed Arafat was ready for a peace agreement. Arafat "has apparently chosen violence and he will bear the responsibility for the consequences of that choice," Barak told a news conference on Saturday night. The Palestinians brushed aside Barak's ultimatum. The Israeli prime minister is employing "blackmail that can only lead the region to wars we don't want," said Arafat adviser Nabil Aburdeneh. Arafat, speaking before Barak's announcement, said Israel was responsible for a "dangerous escalation." Barak was calling his Cabinet into special session on Monday night, after the end of Yom Kippur _ the holiest day of the Jewish year. The ministers will assess the ultimatum to Arafat, discuss the situation in the West Bank and Gaza and also Saturday's abduction of three Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon. Israel ferried hundreds of troops, including special forces, to the frontier, and Cabinet minister Binyanim said Lebanon would pay "a heavy price" if the captives were not returned quickly. The roads along Israel's northern border were empty _ not usually the case just before Yom Kippur, or Day of Atonement, when Israelis normally rush to complete errands before the 25-hour fast begins. U.S. President Bill Clinton, trying to prevent his Mideast policy from disintegrating, repeatedly spoke by phone to Arafat and Barak. The fighting began Sept. 28 when Ariel Sharon, the leader of the hard-line Likud opposition party, visited a Jerusalem shrine holy to Muslims and Jews. Eighty-two people have been killed in 11 days, most Palestinians. With anger and apprehension rising, by-standers have increasingly come under attack. Israeli Arabs stoned cars late Saturday night on the coastal highway between Tel Aviv and Haifa. Police said one Jewish man, 55, died after a stone hit him in the chest. A Palestinian was shot and killed late Saturday night by an Israeli settler near the Palestinian town of Bidya, not far from the West Bank settlement of Ariel, where Palestinians and settlers had exchanged fire, the military said. It was not clear if the victim was involved in the gun battle. Palestinians said they planned a march on the settlements on Sunday morning to protest the man's death. Earlier, settlers had blocked major roads in the West Bank, burning debris and stoning Arab motorists. In the Israeli town of Tiberias, home to one of the kidnapped Israeli soldiers, hundreds of residents chanted "Death to the Arabs" and burned a mosque that local Arabs had hoped to renovate and reopen for use. Shots were fired at Palestinian homes in an Arab area of Jerusalem, and Arabs living in the Jaffa neighborhood of Tel Aviv were also targeted for stoning. Gunmen fired on an Israeli bus in Gaza, injuring seven passengers, two seriously. There were already signs that Israel was raising the stakes in its bid to stop the violence. Before dawn Sunday, the Israeli military Sunday blew up two multistory apartment buildings overlooking the Netzarim junction in Gaza that has been the focus of riots and gun battles, sending the level of Israel's response to more than a week of violence up another notch. Also, the military destroyed another nearby building known as the factory, and cleared an area of several dozen yards (meters) around the fortified position to prevent attacks, the statement said. In the West Bank, the Israelis sent attack helicopters into Hebron for the first time, blasting hilltop positions used by Palestinians to fire on the Jewish settler enclave below. The military warned that the Palestinians "must understand that any firing from a position on (Jewish) settlements or Israeli military forces turns (the position) into a target for attack or destruction." In the West Bank city of Ramallah, an Israeli army commander advised Palestinians in houses near the Jewish settlement of Psagot to leave their homes. For several days, Palestinians have been firing at the settlement from the houses, and Col. Gal Hirsch, who commands Israeli forces in the region, said the army would not show restraint should the gunfire start again. "We will use all we have in the army arsenal," he said, surveying the highrise apartment buildings across the valley. Referring to the simultaneous violence along the Lebanese border and in the Palestinian areas, Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh said Israel was ready to fight on two fronts. "We have enough strength for that. We shall have to be less restrained than we were in the past," Sneh said. Barak's ultimatum to Arafat came after Palestinians trashed Joseph's Tomb, a site in the West Bank town of Nablus, that some Jews consider holy. Barak had ordered Israeli troops withdrawn from the site, putting it in control of Palestinian security forces. Within hours, a mob overwhelmed the site, burning parts and tearing up Jewish holy books left by seminary students. The scenes, broadcast on television, were considered a humiliation by many Israelis. Ghassan Shakaa, the mayor of Nablus, supervised Palestinians who were rebuilding the tomb site on Sunday. He said it would be rebuilt as it was "before 1967," when Israeli forces captured the city _ a suggestion that any sign of Jewish significance would be removed. The tradition linking the site to the biblical patriarch is recent. Archaeologists say the site is just a few hundreds years old, and is the final resting place of a Muslim sheik.

(news.ch)