Israel steps up military reprisals

Senior Israeli Cabinet ministers and security officials today ordered increased military pressure on the Palestinians after a weekend burst of violence in which four Palestinian attacks claimed 21 Israeli lives and 12 Palestinians died.

Israeli tanks and troops entered the Jenin refugee camp from two directions early today, witnesses said. Palestinians and Israeli soldiers were exchanging fire, and militants were setting off explosives next to Israeli tanks, they said. At least 18 tanks were involved in the operation, they said.

The tanks and troops began a sweep in the Jenin camp last Thursday, pulling out on Saturday and taking up positions around the camp, a stronghold of activists from the radical Hamas and Islamic Jihad as well as gunmen from militias associated with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s Fatah group.

Residents said that eight Israeli tanks had entered the camp yesterday as well. The Israeli military said the operation was a continuation of an earlier incursion.

A few hours earlier, Israeli troops entered the Gaza Strip’s Rafah refugee camp and demolished a building there, eyewitnesses said. Two Palestinian gunmen and one civilian were killed in the ensuing exchange of fire and several other Palestinians were wounded, doctors said.

The Israeli military said troops went in to search for tunnels used to smuggle arms under the border from Egypt. Soldiers exchanged fire with armed Palestinians, hitting several, the military said.

After the Security Cabinet meeting, which lasted more than three hours, a minister acknowledged that the government had no new political proposals to stop the carnage. An analyst on Israel’s main evening TV newscast described the government’s position as ‘‘helpless, hopeless and directionless’’.

A brief statement from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s office shortly before midnight said the inner security Cabinet approved military plans for ongoing attacks on Palestinian targets.

‘‘Ministers approved an operational programme presented by the army to apply constant military pressure on the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian terror organisations,’’ the statement said. ‘‘Its object is to halt Palestinian terror.’’ It gave no further details.

Israeli justice minister Meir Sheetrit said last night that neither the left nor the right in Sharon’s coalition government had a solution to the current conflict.

‘‘If there was... I imagine Sharon would adopt it and every one of us in the Cabinet would adopt it,’’ Sheetrit told Israel TV. ‘‘I regret that there is no such magic solution.’’

Earlier yesterday, after a separate meeting of the full Israeli Cabinet, Cabinet secretary Gideon Saar said a clause in a Saudi Arabian peace proposal that calls for Israel to withdraw to its 1967 borders was an unacceptable precondition, although the Cabinet made no formal decision.

‘‘We will not be able to accept, in principle, something dictated before negotiations,’’ he said. ‘‘The frontier, in the whole area, will be determined only by negotiation.’’

Yesterday a Palestinian sniper fired from a hill on an army checkpoint in the West Bank, killing seven soldiers and three civilians.

The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a militia linked to Fatah, circulated a leaflet saying the shooting was in response to Israeli army actions in two West Bank refugee camps.

Israel sent tanks and helicopters on retaliatory raids that hit several Palestinian Authority security targets, killing four Palestinian policemen.

The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for three of four lethal attacks carried out in a 12-hour period from Saturday night to Sunday morning, including the checkpoint shooting.

Palestinians vowed to strike after Israeli forces pushed into two Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank last Thursday in search of militants believed to be responsible for earlier violence.

During the raids, 23 Palestinians were killed in three days, including gunmen, policemen and civilians.

In the Gaza Strip, Palestinian gunmen opened fire on a group of soldiers yesterday along a road that runs on the Israeli side of the fence between the Gaza Strip and southern Israel.

One soldier was killed and four soldiers were wounded, the army said. The military wing of the radical group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for that attack.

The pair of Sunday morning attacks followed a suicide bombing by a member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades Saturday night in a crowded ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighbourhood of Jerusalem, killing nine Israelis and wounding dozens.

Israel says Arafat bears responsibility for the group and could halt the attacks if he was serious about ending the Palestinian violence.

In retaliatory action yesterday, Israeli tanks shelled a Palestinian security intelligence office south of Nablus, and the Palestinians said a policemen was killed. The army confirmed the shelling.

Palestinians also reported a policeman was killed when Israel shelled a police installation outside Ramallah in the West Bank. Clouds of smoke billowed into the air, and one man was helped into a car, his face covered with blood.

Two more policemen died when Israeli troops fired on a police installation in the West Bank town of Qalqiliya, the Palestinians said.