Israel presses strikes

? Israel pressed its campaign of intense strikes Thursday throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip, conducting sweeps in refugee camps and killing 12 Palestinians. A Palestinian suicide bomber attacked a West Bank settlement, while a gunman killed four people and wounded 20 in an Israeli camp.

The attack on the Atzmona settlement came shortly after President Bush announced he planned to send his Mideast envoy back to the region.

A Palestinian gunman infiltrated the Gaza settlement late Thursday and killed four people, before soldiers shot him dead. The attacker wounded 20 people, five seriously, the Israeli military said.

Israel Radio reported the military wing of the militant Hamas organization claimed responsibility. The station said the infiltrator entered the Atzmona settlement from the south, near the Palestinian city of Khan Younis, and threw grenades as well as shooting.

U.S. intervention

Bush said he was sending Anthony Zinni to the troubled region next week in hopes of halting widening violence and called for both sides to end the fighting.

The president said the Israelis had to show “a vision for peace. There’s got to be more than security.” Bush said, however, he fully supported Israel’s right to defend itself from Palestinian attacks.

He called on Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to make a “maximum effort to end terrorism against Israel.”

Israeli troops stormed through two West Bank refugee camps before dawn and rocketed a police station after nightfall in one of Gaza’s most crowded camps, sending Palestinian civilians running for cover. In the biblical West Bank town of Bethlehem, Israeli airstrikes on Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s local headquarters hit so hard they blew open bolted doors in nearby homes.

Israeli leaders said the campaign was aimed at forcing the Palestinians to stop terror attacks, but there was no sign of that on Thursday.

News of Zinni’s departure came just hours after White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said the envoy would not be returning unless there was an “opening where a return by Gen. Zinni would do some good.”

Raanan Gissin, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s spokesman, said he would have no immediate comment on Zinni’s return. He said Israel was studying the development.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat welcomed the U.S. decision. “I do think its a useful move, and I do think that in the deteriorating situation it is necessary to have some serious intervention.”

War or self-defense?

In the deadly conflict, a Palestinian suicide bomber walked into a Jewish settlement’s hotel complex and blew himself up in the lobby, injuring four people and sending canned goods and cereal boxes flying in the adjoining supermarket.

Another suicide bombing, at a trendy Jerusalem cafe, was thwarted when the cafe owner, a waiter and a customer jumped the man, shoved him outside and grabbed his bag after they saw wires dangling from it. “Who, me?” the man asked when confronted, cafe owner Gabi Aldoratz told Israel radio.

At a shopping center in Pardes Hanna, a city in Israel’s north, a resident spotted a suspicious object and called police. As a bomb disposal team approached, the bomb exploded, police said. No one was hurt.

Earlier Thursday, the Bush administration urged Israel to halt its widening assaults, saying they “work against the overriding objective of reducing violence and returning to negotiations.”

“Such actions should be halted now,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

Sharon, stung by an earlier rebuke from Secretary of State Colin Powell, responded that the conflict was “imposed on Israel by the Palestinian Authority and its leader.”

“Israel has never declared war on the Palestinians. Israel fights back against terror organizations in the framework of its right of self-defense. He who started this war has the power to stop it, but continues to prefer a war of terrorism,” Sharon’s office said in a statement.

On Wednesday, Powell said, “If you declare war on the Palestinians and think you can solve the problem by seeing how many Palestinians can be killed, I don’t know that leads us anywhere.” Powell toned down criticism Thursday, saying Sharon should “be careful” of the means he uses in self-defense.

No backing down

A defiant Arafat insisted Palestinians would not be cowed by the escalating strikes.

“No one can shake the Palestinians,” he told reporters in the West Bank town of Ramallah on Thursday, hours after Israel fired missiles at his headquarters complex for the third night in a row. “If the Israelis believe that they can frighten them by tanks or by missiles or by Apaches (helicopter gunships), then they are mistaken.”

A suicide bombing that injured four Israelis, one of them seriously, took place at the entrance to Ariel, the West Bank’s second largest settlement. A radical PLO group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, claimed responsibility.

Helicopters later fired three missiles into PFLP headquarters in the Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, destroying the single-story building, witnesses said. The army said helicopters attacked two police stations in Beit Hanoun, but said nothing about the PFLP offices.

A thwarted suicide bombing in Jerusalem took place just hours earlier. Police chief Mickey Levy said the Palestinian had clearly intended to carry out a suicide attack.

“I can’t say anything more, other than to say we had a miracle here,” Aldoratz, the cafe owner, told Israel radio.

Sharon ordered the military strikes, among the most intense and wide-ranging of the 17-month-old conflict, after more than two dozen Israelis were killed last weekend in a string of Palestinian attacks.

In the West Bank, about 80 tanks and armored vehicles entered the town of Tulkarem late Wednesday and surrounded the adjacent refugee camps of Tulkarem and Nur Shams, meeting sharp resistance from dozens of Palestinian gunmen, witnesses said. Twenty-four hours later, gunmen and soldiers were still exchanging fire.

Nine Palestinians were killed in the fighting, including a rescue worker, Palestinians said. In New York, the United Nations said one of those shot dead was a U.N. aid worker in an ambulance with U.N. markings. The military was checking the report.

In the West Bank village of Siris, Israeli forces killed a leader of the militant Islamic Jihad, Mohammed Anani, 27, who opened fire on soldiers as they approached his home, witnesses said. Anani had been wanted by Israel for involvement in suicide bombings.

Also Thursday, Israeli warplanes fired missiles at a Gaza City complex that had been hit many times before. After Thursday’s strike, only two of 25 buildings in the compound remained standing. The missiles sent rubble and glass flying hundreds of yards, and eight people were wounded. Children at a nearby school ran from the area.

Two Palestinians were killed in gunbattles with Israeli troops in central and northern Gaza on Thursday, Palestinian doctors said. Also Thursday, Israeli gunboats fired missiles at a Palestinian police roadblock near the Gaza City coast and wounded 13 policemen, three critically, Palestinian security officials said.

After dark Thursday in the West Bank town of Dura, Israel hit the headquarters of Force 17, an elite Palestinian force, but no one was inside. Helicopters also struck the local headquarters of Fatah in nearby Yatta, the military said.