Nasser Sayaz set out from his home in the Kalandiya refugee camp at 6 a.m. yesterday morning, taking his new-born child on what should have been a brief journey to a doctor in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Four hours later, he made it through the new roadblock set up by the Israeli army. "There's nowhere now that isn't encircled by tanks," he said despairingly as he made his way into Ramallah. "Only God can liberate us."
All around Ramallah, the Palestinian "capital" of the West Bank, indeed, the Israeli army was yesterday maintaining a blockade more rigid, it acknowledged, than any closure order enforced previously in the five months of the Palestinian uprising. At various points around the city, Palestinians used tractors to try to push aside Israeli roadblocks, and bulldozers to try to force their way across deep trenches. A 28-year-old Palestinian, Mr Abdel Kader Abu Akroub, was killed in one clash with Israeli troops on the city's perimeter. The Palestinians said he was shot by live fire; Israeli military officials said they had used rubber-coated bullets and tear gas to keep back crowds.
Palestinian leaders were meeting last night to decide on means to counter the blockade. Said Mr Ahmed Queria, Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Assembly: "If [the Prime Minister, Mr Ariel] Sharon thinks that, through such procedures, he can bring the Palestinian people to their knees, he is living in illusions." Mr Hussein al-Sheikh, a top official from Mr Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, added that the blockade would feed popular anger at Israel and so cause "a severe escalation of the Intifada".
Somewhat surprisingly, much of the new Israeli "unity" government appeared to agree with them. Mr Sharon, speaking after his cabinet's first meeting, insisted that the Ramallah blockade did not mark a new get-tough policy. Rather, he said, it had been imposed at the discretion of the local military commander, acting on firm intelligence information about a car bomb, readied in Ramallah and set to be driven into Israel. Some of the bomb-planners had been captured, he said, but others were "still in the field".
Overall, promised Mr Sharon, his policy would be to avoid "collective punishment" wherever possible - a strategy applauded by most of his 26strong cabinet. To that end, he noted, the army was yesterday easing some of the travel and other restrictions it had imposed on four other West Bank cities: Qalkilya, Tulkarm, Hebron and Bethlehem. "Where there is quiet, we'll ease the restrictions," he said. "But where there is a threat to Israeli lives, we'll take all necessary steps." If Mr Arafat's Palestinian Authority truly wanted to ease the plight of the people, he chided, "they should take steps against the infrastructure of terrorism, as they promised in all the agreements they signed."
The Foreign Minister, Mr Shimon Peres, Mr Sharon's improbable right-hand-man, added that neither he nor Mr Sharon "want to harm Palestinian civilians. Their suffering gives us no pleasure."
Reuters adds: Mr Arafat said after talks with European officials yesterday that their involvement was crucial to revive peace talks with Israel. "The European role is very important to save the peace process," Arafat told reporters after talks with the EU Commissioner for External Affairs, Mr Chris Patten, and the Swedish Foreign Minister, Ms Anna Lindh.
In Washington, the State Department criticised some Israeli restrictions and disputed Israel's argument that closing off Palestinian towns helped provide security for Israelis.