MIDDLE EAST: Israel tightened the noose around Mr Yasser Arafat yesterday, blowing up several buildings in the Palestinian President's Ramallah compound and placing it under siege again. But senior Ministers insisted that deporting the Palestinian leader from the occupied territories was not an option, for now.
In Gaza, three Palestinians, including a 15-year-old boy, were killed yesterday by Israeli troops operating in different parts of the Strip.
In the course of the military action in Ramallah, retaliation for a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv on Thursday which killed six people and the bomber, the army dynamited three buildings used by the Palestinian security forces, leaving a pall of smoke hanging over Mr Arafat's compound. That leaves only two buildings standing in the headquarters, with Mr Arafat hunkered down in one of the structures, which has been lined with sandbags.
Mr Arafat's aides said his office was rocked by the explosions, but that he was unharmed. Mr Nabil Abu Rudeineh, an aide to Mr Arafat, said the Palestinian leader had spoken to several Arab leaders yesterday who had promised to push for an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council to discuss an immediate Israeli withdrawal.
A bodyguard of Mr Arafat's was killed in the compound by an Israeli sniper yesterday. Overnight on Thursday, about 20 Palestinian security personnel in the complex surrendered to Israeli troops, filing out of the compound with their hands up.
With the Palestinian leader again blockaded in his office, as he was for 34 days in March and April, Israel is demanding that he turn over some 20 Palestinians holed up inside whom it says have been involved in carrying out or orchestrating attacks against Israelis. Both Mr Tawfik Tirawi, the head of military intelligence in the West Bank, and Mr Mahmoud Damra, the head of Mr Arafat's Force 17 bodyguard unit, are on the "wanted" list.
"We are not planning to use weapons or force, but plan to maintain the pressure so that everyone who is in there will come out," said Israeli Defence Minister Mr Benjamin Ben-Eliezer.
The Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, promised Mr Tirawi a fair trial in Israel, but Palestinian officials were adamant they had no intention of handing the men over. They conceded, though, that the US was urging them to do so.
White House press secretary Mr Ari Fleischer, however, sounded a rare caution to Israel yesterday, saying that while the Jewish state "has the right to defend itself and to deal with security", it also had to "bear in mind the consequences of action". The Americans are acutely aware that any flare-up on the Israeli-Palestinian front could unsettle their efforts to forge some degree of consensus, especially among demonstratively unenthusiastic Arab states, for an attack on Iraq. This is why the US is opposed to evicting Mr Arafat from the territories, a move Mr Sharon has contemplated on several occasions.
But Mr Ben-Eliezer insisted yesterday that Israel's plan was to increasingly isolate the Palestinian leader, not expel him. "In terms of the chairman," the Defence Minister said, referring to Mr Arafat, "we have no intention of expelling him or firing at him. We want to isolate him." A senior Israeli Minister, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the logic behind the latest blockade on Mr Arafat - one he did not agree with - was to even further marginalise the Palestinian leader. "The Americans are against him, the Europeans now understand who they're dealing with, and there is internal criticism of Arafat," he said. "So the view is that another push will shove him even further out of the picture." The Minister, however, said he believed reimposing the siege on the Palestinian leader would only bolster his standing among his own people, not erode it further.
The suicide bombing in Tel Aviv claimed a sixth victim yesterday, when Jonathan Jesner, a 19-year-old seminary student from Scotland, died from severe head wounds sustained in the blast.
In the Gaza Strip, Palestinians said three civilians were killed by Israeli soldiers, including a 15-year-old boy.
Two of the three, aged 25 and 35, were killed by Israeli gunfire during an incursion by the military in the northern part of the Strip. The teenage boy was killed in clashes with troops in the southern town of Rafah.