Ramallah, April 7
Israeli tanks and troops overnight entered the Palestinian village of Beit Rima near Ramallah in West Bank, Palestinian security sources said today.They said around 30 tanks and armoured vehicles backed up troops making a house-to-house search for militants, just hours after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon pledged to try to speed up Israel’s campaign against the Palestinians.
Israeli forces had stormed almost all major Palestinian self-rule towns in West Bank in a massive crackdown on militant groups and had occupied a number of villages where suspects were thought to have taken shelter.
The army took over Beit Rima, a remote hill village north of Ramallah, past October in a hunt for the killers of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi, shot dead by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in revenge for Israel’s slaying of its leader.
The Israeli army also stepped up its military deployment on the Jewish state’s northern border following a string of armed incidents in the region, Maariv newspaper reported.
The army had “reinforced its deployment on the border with Syria in case of a deterioration of the situation,” said the paper, which ran a photograph of tanks headed north.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was under intense pressure to end the nine-day-old offensive, with US President George W. Bush insisting Israel pull its forces out of Palestinian-ruled West Bank cities ‘without delay’.
“I expect Israel to heed my advice,” Bush said at a Texas press conference yesterday with visiting British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who Bush said shared his view.
It was the most hard-hitting demand yet from the USA, Israel’s closest ally, which had until recently staunchly backed Sharon while urging Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to do more to stop attacks on Israelis.
Bush later made a direct appeal to Sharon to withdraw his forces, warning that delay could undermine a US-led peace mission, a senior administration official said.
However, Sharon gave no commitment to end the operation any time soon and another Israeli official said Israel would only pull out once it had achieved its goals.
Despite Bush’s plea, violence continued unabated in West Bank yesterday, with soldiers and gunmen battling alley by alley in the crowded Jenin refugee
camp.
JERUSALEM: An Israeli field commander said on Sunday that his troops had killed more than 30 armed Palestinians in fierce house-to-house fighting in the West Bank city of Nablus over the past 48 hours.
AFP, Reuters
