Independent, The (London): Israel ignores outcry to raid more refugee camps

ISRAEL IGNORED international condemnation yesterday of its strategy of raiding crowded and volatile Palestinian refugee camps, which has led to dozens of deaths over the past few days, and sent its troops storming into two more.

The attacks came as Israel pressed ahead with its non-stop military offensive across the occupied territories against the Palestinians whom the Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, has vowed to beat into submission.

As the Middle East saw another day of death and near misses - including a suicide bomber wrestled to the ground in Jerusalem before he hit the trigger on a suitcase full of explosives - alarm grew in the international community.

Foreign Office officials said they were "very concerned about Israel's policies, in particular the belief that retaliation works" and warned that the raids into refugee camps could inflame the situation further.

The risk of a major disaster grows greater by the day, as army raids, missile strikes by air and sea, and suicide bombings continue. Together they have claimed more than 100 lives in a week.

The Israeli air force played another game of Russian roulette with thousands of Palestinian civilians by drop-ping a 1,000lb bomb into an already wrecked police complex in Gaza City at 9am. It landed within 200 yards of three United Nations schools, where more than 3,000 children were studying. The air raid drew a scathing condemnation from Peter Hansen, commissioner general of Unwra, the UN relief organisation for Palestinian refugees, which operates the schools. He accused Israel of "sowing panic and terror" among Gaza's civilians.

Undeterred by the immediate backlash that followed last week's refugee camp raids in Nablus and Jenin - a suicide bombing in Jerusalem and a sniper attack on an army checkpoint, which together killed 20 Israelis - Israel sent troops into two more crowded and impoverished refugee camps in a pre-dawn assault backed by Merkava tanks and attack helicopters.

A few hours later, with the day's Palestinian death toll ticking up towards double figures, came the inevitable response to the continuing onslaught as two more suicide bombers set off to murder and maim Israeli civilians.

One blew himself up in the lobby of a hotel in Ariel, a Jewish settlement in the West Bank, injuring 10 people.

Unusually, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a radical PLO group, claimed responsibility. This is further worrying evidence that the pool of suicide bombers has expanded from Islamists to secular nationalists.

In west Jerusalem, a bloodbath was averted by a waiter and a security guard at a restaurant in the chic German Colony district, who tackled a young Palestinian bomber who had asked for a glass of water after walking in with wires protruding from his clothes.

At the same time, scores of Israeli tanks were inside the West Bank town of Tulkarm, in another invasion into an area designated as autonomous Palestinian territory under the Oslo interim accords, which Mr Sharon has always opposed and is now destroying.

In an operation billed by Israel's army as a search for "wanted terrorists", troops entered the Tulkarm and Nour Shams refugee camps, as tanks fired several dozen shells and Palestinian gunmen fired back.

The camps, which are next to each other, have a combined population of about 25,000. Initial reports said that five people were killed, and at least 20 injured in the raids by Israeli forces, which were still continuing last night.

The army placed the population under curfew, while soldiers made house-to-house raids through the camps, which are Fatah strongholds, but also have a large Hamas following.

The Israeli army's raids will deepen international concern over Mr Sharon's strategy, which some view as an attempt to crush all chances of a Palestinian state, consolidate permanent control over the bulk of the West Bank, and bludgeon the Palestinians into accepting autonomy over the remaining fragments.

Critics of Mr Sharon, whose position in opinion polls is slipping, argue that his military campaign is only provoking Palestinian violence, especially the raids on the refugee camps, and stands no chance of stopping armed groups fighting against the 35-year occupation of Arab land.

With the northern West Bank seething, Israel's armed forces also mounted assaults in its southern half, using F-16s to fire missiles into Palestinian security buildings in Bethlehem and Hebron. Israeli gunboats also fired missiles at a Palestinian police roadblock near the Gaza City coast and wounded 13 policemen, three critically, Palestinian officials said.

As the war worsens, the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, has finally begun to ask critical questions of Israel, about whether killing more people will achieve anything.

But to those on the ground, it is far too little, and too late.

David Aaronovitch, Review, page 3