Mona Ziade
Daily Star staff

Buoyed by hints of mounting US distaste for Yasser Arafat, Israeli tanks charged to the Palestinian president’s doorstep in Ramallah on Thursday, killing a bodyguard and pulverizing his living quarters to avenge a suicide bombing near Tel Aviv.
The six-hour incursion suggested that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was more determined than ever to politically eliminate his nemesis, encouraged by US President George W. Bush’s public skepticism of Arafat’s trustworthiness and ability to rule.
Arafat was not hurt and emerged defiant after the tanks pulled back. But one of his intelligence officers was killed and six were wounded, a day after an Islamic militant blew up an explosives-packed car next to a bus in Israel, killing 17 people, 13 of them soldiers.
The bombing and the army push into Arafat’s compound before Sharon’s visit to Washington next week undercut stepped-up international diplomacy aimed at breaking a vicious cycle of Middle East violence and reviving peace talks.
In the pre-dawn strike on Arafat’s headquarters, a column of about 50 tanks and armored vehicles opened fire with shells and heavy machine guns on his offices. Witnesses said the compound was hit by some 30 shells.
After the pullout, Arafat stood in his bedroom staring at the dust and debris on his bed. A shattered mirror hung nearby and bullet holes pierced the walls.
“I was supposed to sleep here but I had work to do downstairs and did not go to sleep. They shelled this room wanting me to be here,” he told reporters.
The Israeli military denied aiming at the Palestinian leader, who often works through the night in his nearby office.
Cranking up the pressure, Israeli tanks and troops returned briefly Thursday afternoon to raid an area in the south of Ramallah, at the other end of the city from Arafat’s base.
That raid ended with the army arresting six Palestinians after a failed hunt for Sheikh Hilmi, an activist from the militant Islamic group Hamas whose house was searched.
Attack helicopters fired at the ground as 15 tanks surrounded Hilmi’s home.
“Today’s event is very much a response to yesterday’s attack, Sharon is frustrated and angry with Arafat, but it is also a sign that we’re approaching a new decision on what to do with him,” said Israeli military commentator Zeev Schiff.
“Arafat’s political elimination is on the cards, whether by expelling him or sidelining him,” he added.
Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo said the  assaults in Ramallah were “another indication of the comprehensive Israeli war against the Palestinian Authority.”
Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said the pre-dawn raid aimed “to focus responsibility on the behavior of the Palestinian Authority for terror in general and the current wave in particular, against which the PA (Palestinian Authority) and its head do not do enough to stop.”
Sharon said Israel was facing a “merciless campaign” conducted by Arafat aimed at breaking Israel’s resolve. “We will continue this battle in the ways we think are most suited and we will win,” he told an economic conference in Tel Aviv.
Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres put the blame for Wednesday’s suicide bombing on Syria, where the secretary-general of Islamic Jihad, which claimed responsibility for the attack, is based.
A founder of Islamic Jihad, Sheikh Nafez Azzam, told Reuters in Gaza on Thursday that suicide bombings would continue. “There is nothing offered by the United States, Israel or the world that could end Israel’s occupation,” he said. “So resistance including martyrdom attacks is the sole choice to regain our rights.”
On Wednesday, Washington signaled it wanted to engage with alternative Palestinian leaders.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said: “In the president’s eyes, Yasser Arafat has never played a role of someone who can be trusted and who
is effective.”
The remark raised speculation that Washington was becoming more sympathetic to Sharon’s desire to get rid of Arafat. But on Thursday, another White House spokesman offered another spin.
Sean McCormack said from Washington that exiling Arafat would not help bring peace to the Middle East.
“I don’t think exiling Arafat solves anything,” he said. “The issue is building Palestinian institutions and in the process, bringing the Palestinian people into the building of these institutions,” he said.
Israel did not inform Washington before it struck Arafat’s headquarters, McCormack said.
Responding to the latest salvo from Washington, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said it was unthinkable for democratic countries to be pondering a “coup d’etat” against Arafat.
“We hope that the American administration, instead of taking a cost-free road and slugging the Palestinians, they should find a way to have Sharon comply with the relevant (UN) Security Council resolutions,” Erekat told Reuters.
A top Bush adviser dismissed suggestions of mixed signals emerging from the White House, telling reporters in Washington the statements reflected increased US emphasis on identifying potential alternatives to Arafat’s leadership while leaving the door ajar to what Bush considers a remote chance that Arafat himself might reform the Palestinian Authority.
Israel’s response to the suicide bombing coincided with the start of a visit to Washington by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who confers with Bush at Camp David  this weekend to discuss US-led efforts to convene an international Middle East peace conference this summer.
Bush sees Sharon at the White House on Monday, but the Israeli leader’s rejection of Arafat as a partner in any peace effort has undermined the chances of agreement on the composition and agenda of such a parley.
On another diplomatic front, Jordan’s King Abdullah II left Saudi Arabia after talks with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah on the mounting Arab-Israeli tensions.
In other developments Thursday, an Israeli was shot and seriously wounded Thursday by Palestinian gunmen near the Jewish settlement of Shilo, north of Ramallah. The man was hit in the chest and taken to hospital in Jerusalem, the Israeli military said, without specifying if the Israeli was a settler.
Israeli forces, meanwhile, withdrew from Jenin a day after they rolled in, but kept the northern West Bank town encircled, with tanks continuing to fire on targets from outside the city, Palestinian security sources said.
Israeli tanks and helicopters had stormed Jenin Wednesday immediately after the bombing, staged by a native of the town that bore the brunt of the military campaign that has been under way since March 29.

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