Israel retaliated a suicide bombing in Jerusalem by closing down all Palestinian institutions in east Jerusalem, including Orient House, the de facto PLO offices in the holy city, after a major military attack on targets in the West Bank.
Palestinian MP for Jerusalem Hatem Abdul Qader told Al Jazeera satellite channel that temporary offices will be set to “keep the Palestinian presence,” in the occupied city.
He had told AFP that "this is an occupation of the place and an attempt to impose the status quo" of Israeli domination over the Palestinian territories.
"We will resist this occupation," he said.
Israeli government spokesman Daniel Seamam confirmed the operation, saying seven people had been arrested and the building closed "until further orders because it was a center for incitement to violence."
Earlier Friday, Israel launched swift and hard-hitting retaliatory strikes, hours after a Palestinian suicide bombing killed up to 18 people in Jerusalem and injured dozens more, said AFP.
Warplanes blitzed Palestinian police headquarters in the West Bank and tanks moved into the Gaza Strip.
An F-16 fighter jet fired three missiles at the Ramallah police station. The building, located in the west of the city, had been evacuated in anticipation of an Israeli attack, Palestinian security officials said.
They told the agency that no one was injured in the attack, but that "80 percent" of the building was damaged. The office serves as the Palestinian police headquarters for the West Bank.
Smoke could be seen rising from the scene, and ambulances were rushing to the building, said an AFP correspondent in the town.
And Israeli tanks moved almost a kilometer (half a mile) into Palestinian territory in the Gaza Strip, shelling and destroying a Palestinian security position, said Palestinian officials.
Israel says the Palestinian Authority, led by Yasser Arafat, is partly responsible for bomb attacks on Israelis, accusing it of inciting bombers and refusing to clamp down on "terrorists".
In another operation, Israeli police also occupied a Palestinian Authority and security office in Abu Dis, on the outskirts of Jerusalem, the Palestinian official said.
The strike in Ramallah was the first time since May 18 that Israel has used war planes and not attack helicopters to strike Palestinian targets. Three planes struck the West Bank after a Palestinian attack that left nine dead and around 60 injured.
Meanwhile, residents in Bethlehem reported seeing Israeli Apache helicopters over that West Bank town, south of Jerusalem.
Witnesses in Jenin, in the northern West Bank, told AFP they had seen heavy movement of Israeli forces, including tanks and armored troop carriers, on the edge of town.
The attack, long feared by Israelis as the government stoked Palestinian outrage with its policy of killing militants deemed a security threat, brought swift retribution from hawkish Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
He summoned his security cabinet just hours after the blast caused chaos and carnage in the heart of the city, and gave the green light to a "severe armed response," political sources said.
His more conciliatory foreign minister, Shimon Peres, was opposed to a large-scale military reaction, the sources said.
One senior government source had said as the meeting was underway that the response would mete out a "proportionate" response to the "horrendous" crime perpetrated against the Jewish state.
The bombing was the worst attack on Jerusalem in the Palestinian Intifada, pushing the death toll for the 10-month wave of violence past the 700 mark.
The dead included five members of the same family of Jewish settlers from the West Bank, with both parents and three children wiped out by the blast, according to relatives.
A total of six children were killed, Israeli public television said.
The Jerusalem Post reported that the dead included two tourists, a 31-year-old woman from the United States and a 60-year-old man from Brazil.
The attack was claimed by two separate Palestinian groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Hamas has lost at least nine activists in the past month to Israel's policy of killing Palestinian militants it accuses of planning deadly attacks on Israelis.
Hamas said its suicide bomber Izzedine Shahin Al Masri was the man killed, along with 17 others, when he detonated a powerful nail-bomb in a crowded pizzeria at lunchtime.
The group said that Islamic Jihad's "suicide bomber" was still alive.
AFP said earlier that an Islamic Jihad unit called the Salaheddine Al Ayyoubi Brigades had initially claimed responsibility for the pizzeria bombing, in a statement faxed to its Amman office.
But the group later emailed a correction to Albawaba.com, saying the bombing was carried out by the military wing of Islamic Jihad, the Jerusalem Brigades, and that there was no such unit as the Salaheddine Al Ayyoubi Brigades.
In a later fax, the Islamic Jihad identified the resistance fighter as Hussein Omar Abu Amsha, 23, from Jenin in the West Bank.
The assassinations, described by Israel as "self-defense" to ward off further killings of Israelis, have been condemned by the international community and drawn urgent pleas from the Palestinians for international observers to be deployed in their territories.
Top Arafat aide Nabil Abu Rudeina called the Israeli operations "a dangerous escalation that will lead us to catastrophe."
"I ask the world community and mainly the United States to intervene and put an end to this dangerous escalation, and in particular to the occupation of Orient House," he said.
Israeli retaliation came after US Secretary of State Colin Powell described the situation as "very dangerous" and called for restraint.
US President George W. Bush, vacationing in Texas, vigorously condemned what he called the "cowardly" Palestinian attack in west Jerusalem.
According to BBC correspondent, Bush’s reaction was unusual as he used the word “terrorist” three times in such a brief statement -- Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
