October 20, 2001	Saturday	Shaba'an 2, 1422

RAMALLAH: Israel exacted early revenge for the assassination of a cabinet minister, blowing up a wanted Palestinian guerrilla and two other men in a car bombing barely two hours after the far-right leader was laid to rest on Thursday.

The assassinations and a pre-dawn thrust by Israeli tanks into Yasser Arafat’s seat of power in the West Bank city of Ramallah were seen as a prelude to what many fear will be an all out-war against the Palestinian Authority.

In gunbattles provoked by the assaults on two Palestinian towns earlier on Thursday, a 12-year-old girl was killed in Jenin when tanks shelled her classroom, and two members of Arafat’s security forces were shot dead in Ramallah.

A further escalation in the Middle East blood feud seemed inevitable after Palestinian officials said that Arafat would never give up the killers of the far-right leader, Rehavam Zeevi, as Israel demands.

Zeevi, the tourism minister who was better known for his ultra-nationalist views, was shot dead outside his hotel room in Jerusalem on Wednesday.

The Palestinian stand — and the closing of ranks in Israel around a man shunned in life by many Jews for his calls to expel Arabs from the Holy Land — deepened the crisis in the region, and jeopardized Washington’s coalition building efforts for its war on terror.

On Thursday, Israeli newspapers quoted the prime minister, Ariel Sharon, as saying: “As far as I am concerned, the era of Arafat is over.”

The quote prompted accusations from Palestinian officials of a plot to kill their leader, claims which Israel dismissed.

However, there was no quarter shown for Atef Abayat, a local leader of Arafat’s Fatah militia who was wanted by Israel for the drive-by shooting of a Jewish settler last month. Hours after Zeevi’s funeral, Palestinian security forces in Bethlehem pulled the corpses of Abayat and two other gunmen from an exploded car. They said the three had been killed by a bomb planted in the vehicle, which was stolen.

It was Israel’s third assassination of Palestinian guerrillas in five days, and the killing threatens to sabotage Arafat’s tentative efforts to atone for the death of the cabinet minister.

After baulking for weeks in the face of Israeli and American demands to crackdown on guerrillas, the Palestinian leader on Thursday outlawed the military wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which claimed Zeevi’s killing. He also arrested a dozen of its activists in the West Bank and Gaza, although officials said some were later released.

However, Palestinian officials ruled out giving up activists to Israel. “Arafat can never extradite any Palestinian to Israel,” said Marwan Barghouti, Arafat’s chief lieutenant in the West Bank, who escaped an Israeli assassination attempt himself a few months ago. “I do not think it is a a fair or just demand.”

Pausing to exchange kisses with an activist wearing a bandolier of machine-gun bullets around his neck, Barghouti spoke a few hundred metres back from three Israeli tanks, which took control on Thursday of a highly symbolic swathe of Ramallah. The kilometre-long stretch of land is an upmarket neighbourhood housing several offices of Arafat’s Palestinian Authority, and the home of one of the most senior officials, Abu Mazen.

Israel set no deadline for the handover of Zeevi’s killers, or the men who planned the murder. However, security officials say that Arafat has just a week to cave in or face the consequences.

By demanding the handover of the activists, Israel is trying to draw parallels with Washington’s policy towards the Taliban ahead of the launch of the attacks on Afghanistan.

But the hardening of positions within Israel has brought a mirror reaction in the West Bank and Gaza. In Ramallah, people argue that the killing of Zeevi was a direct result of Israel’s strategy of assassination — a view that will be even more widely held after Abayat’s assassination.

“Now this policy has backfired on Israel. Do you think that they could continue assassinating Palestinians, and that Palestinians would sit down and stay silent?” Barghouti said. —Dawn/The Guardian News Service.