Israel blasts home of Palestinian security chief

The home of a West Bank security chief was attacked by an Israeli tank today after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon defended his decision to use war planes against Palestinian targets.

Jibril Rajoub was slightly hurt when his house was hit by tank shells and badly damaged.

Witnesses said one shell exploded inside the house and two others landed outside.

Rajoub, a frequent participant in talks with Israeli security officials about restoring cooperation with Palestinians, said: ‘‘This is a new criminal attack against myself and my family,’’

He added: ‘‘I don’t think that this is an assassination attempt on my life’’, but Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo claimed it was a bid to assassinate Rajoub. ‘‘They shelled his house while he was inside,’’ he said.

The Israeli military said its forces fired back at a position where Palestinians were firing and denied there was an attempt to hit Rajoub.

The shelling came during a fierce exchange of fire between Palestinian gunmen and soldiers guarding the nearby settlement of Psagot. One Israeli soldier and two Palestinians were wounded.

Sharon convened top Cabinet ministers today after a wave of violence that claimed the lives of six Israelis and 16 Palestinians, including a suicide bomber who blew himself up outside an Israeli shopping centre on Friday morning.

Security was tight in preparation for the annual Jerusalem Day, beginning at sundown today. Israel planned a series of marches in Jerusalem to show support for maintaining all of the city as the Jewish state’s capital.

The Palestinians are demanding the area that Israel occupied in 1967 - including the Old City with its Muslim, Jewish and Christian holy sites - as their future capital. The issue was one of the main sticking points in negotiations that broke down several months ago.

In Cairo, a meeting of Arab foreign ministers and delegates on Saturday asked Arab governments to sever political contact with Israel until it ceased military action against Palestinians.

But Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak vowed today that Egypt and Jordan would not give up their efforts to relaunch the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks.

In Israel, politicians and analysts questioned whether the massive retaliation to Friday’s attack - including war plane strikes against Palestinian targets - would have any effect.

‘‘We will do what it takes and use everything at our disposal to protect the citizens of Israel,’’ Sharon told the Yediot Ahronot newspaper in defence of the strategy.

‘‘The Americans understand that we cannot take any more.’’

Major General Giora Eiland, chief of military operations, said Israel decided to use US-made F-16 fighter planes because they were the only aircraft that could accurately hit the targets Israel was aiming for.

He said this did not signal a new stage of calculated escalation of firepower.

‘‘The targets were big enough or strong enough that attack helicopters were considered not as effective enough to penetrate, or to hit this target that we chose,’’ Eiland told reporters. ‘‘We were looking for the best ammunition for them and in this specific case it was the F-16.’’

Israeli opposition leader Yossi Sarid said the Palestinians killed were not necessarily the ones involved in violence.

‘‘Those attacking us want high casualties on our side but it’s also clear they seek high casualties on their side (to) help trigger the cycle of extremism on their side,’’ he said.

Former air force chief Eitan Ben-Eliyahu said the use of F-16s could backfire.

‘‘Under the present circumstances ... I would not send an F-16 into the skies because the consequences could be extremely harsh,’’ he said.

Meanwhile, Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer asked US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to do everything possible to ‘‘convince (Palestinian leader Yasser) Arafat to stop the violence,’’ Ben-Eliezer’s office said in a statement.

Former Foreign Ministry director-general Alon Liel called for former US Senator George Mitchell, who heads an international commission investigating the causes of the past eight months of violence, be appointed as a Middle East envoy.

A draft of the Mitchell commission report calls for an end to violence, but also says Israel should stop all construction in Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza.

Israel has insisted that some construction must continue in existing settlements to account for ‘‘natural growth’’.

In the Gaza Strip, tensions continued to simmer today.

The Palestinian Popular Resistance Committee claimed responsibility for setting an explosive device off next to an Israeli tank near the Rafah refugee camp along the Egyptian border. The military said there were no injuries.

Palestinian security officials said Israeli naval boats fired on Palestinian police positions off the Gaza coast. The army called the report ‘‘baseless’’.

In all, the cycle of violence that began last year has claimed 469 lives on the Palestinian side and 84 on the Israeli side.