Jerusalem — Israeli F-16 warplanes destroyed a Palestinian Authority compound in a West Bank town Friday, and tanks tightened their ring around Yasser Arafat to an unprecedented degree reprisals for an attack on a Jewish confirmation party that left six celebrants and the Palestinian gunman dead.
The sharp escalation signaled the collapse of U.S. truce efforts.
This week's bloody events began with the killing of a Palestinian militia leader widely attributed to Israel that triggered revenge attacks, including the shooting spree inside a banquet hall in the Israeli town of Hadera late Thursday.
In Israel's reprisal, U.S.-made warplanes fired missiles at the large, two-story government compound in the West Bank town of Tulkarem early Friday, reducing it to rubble. A Palestinian policeman was killed and about 20 other policemen were injured.
In the West Bank town of Ramallah, Israeli forces overlooking Arafat's headquarters were reinforced and tanks rumbled to within 50 yards of the Palestinian leader's office seen as Israel's sternest warning yet that Arafat's continued failure to rein in militants might one day spell the end of his rule. From the tanks, Israeli troops occasionally fired tear gas at Palestinian stone-throwers.
In all, about 20 Israeli tanks took up positions in several neighborhoods of Ramallah, and soldiers commandeered the home of West Bank intelligence chief Tawfik Tirawi who was not there at the time. His family was confined to one room of the house while troops occupied the remainder and took up positions on the roof.
The violence left little hope that a U.S. truce mission could succeed. A U.S. envoy, Anthony Zinni, was to have returned to the region this week, but his trip was delayed because of the renewed violence.
Thursday night's attack on the Hadera banquet hall was the first deadly attack by Palestinian militants in Israel since a Dec. 2 bus bombing in the port city of Haifa in which 16 Israelis were killed.
In the Hadera shooting, former Palestinian Authority policeman Abed Hassouna, a member of the Al Aqsa Brigades, a militia linked to Arafat's Fatah movement, entered a banquet hall where about 180 guests were celebrating the bat mitzvah, or confirmation of a 12-year-old girl. He opened fire with an assault rifle, killing six people and injuring 30, Israeli police said.
"The terrorist came in the main door with an M-16 at the height of the event and started shooting everywhere," said Shimon Asraf, one of the owners of Armon David hall.
Moti Hasson, who was dancing when he heard the shooting, said he hit the attacker in the face with the chair while other people threw bottles at him. Others dove under tables. Some people shouted in fright.
After Hasson hit the attacker, the man's gun jammed.
"His gun just stopped shooting," said Hasson, who was standing outside the banquet hall wearing a sweat shirt and carrying a bag of the clothes he wore during the attack, which were soaked with the gunman's blood.
People in the hall pushed the attacker outside, where he was shot dead by police. The attacker had a hand grenade and an ammunition belt which police at first feared was a belt of explosives for a suicide attack.
Hadera is located in northern Israel, near the line separating Israel from the West Bank, and has been the scene of several Palestinian bombings in recent months.
In Tulkarem, about a dozen Al Aqsa Brigades militants marched through the streets Thursday night, shooting into the air to celebrate the Hadera attack.
Local gunmen said they had observed the Dec. 16 cease-fire declared by Arafat, but that they couldn't show restraint after their leader, Raed Karmi, was killed earlier this week in what Palestinians said was an Israeli assassination.
"In three weeks, Fatah groups ... didn't shoot a single bullet," said Raed Kanaan, the Fatah leader in Tulkarem. "But Israel and the world wouldn't accept this. Israel continued all the aggressive attacks, while the Americans gave justification to the Israeli aggression."
In Ramallah, Israeli troops reoccupied about half of the town Friday, said Palestinian political activist Mustafa Barghouti, who lives near Tirawi in Ramallah's Tira neighborhood. "The tanks are very close," he said. "They are not just closing the main roads in and out but they're inside the neighborhoods cutting access to schools and kindergartens."
The army said that in response to the Hadera attack, armor and sappers tightened the blockade on Ramallah and neighboring areas and took up positions giving them control over Palestinian-ruled territory.
Israeli government spokesman Arie Mekel said the relative lull following Arafat's truce declaration had raised hopes that moves could be made toward the resumption of peace talks but they were dashed by intelligence warnings of planned Palestinian attacks.
"We thought for a while that we did see some light at the end of the tunnel," he said. "But then the information said that the Palestinians were planning more of these vicious attacks."
In a meeting with a visiting State Department official Friday, Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer called for Zinni to return to the region and pressure Arafat to reign in militants, particularly those from the Tanzim militia, also linked to Fatah.
"He is not preventing the Tanzim and terror organizations from carrying out attacks," a statement from Ben-Eliezer's office quoted him as telling John Bolton, undersecretary for arms control and international security.
Israel renewed its blockade of several Palestinian towns in the West Bank on Thursday following the killings this week of three civilians an American man, an Israeli woman and a Palestinian resident of Jerusalem by Palestinian gunmen.
It has imposed travel bans on Palestinians periodically since the start of fighting in September 2000, restrictions Israel says are needed to keep suspected militants out of Israel.
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