Edition: U.S. / Global


Published: April 2, 2002

Israeli soldiers and tanks poured into the West Bank on Monday as Palestinians continued attacks and as angry demonstrations spread across the Arab world against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's all-out campaign against the Palestinians.

Early this morning, the Israeli Army attacked the headquarters of Jibril Rajoub, the powerful Palestinian security chief in the West Bank, who had been a crucial ally of the United States after the 1993 Oslo peace talks, and jailed scores of Islamic militants. The building was set on fire.

In the West Bank, the army moved in force on Monday night into Bethlehem and into Tulkarm to the north with scores of tanks, armored personnel carriers and armored bulldozers backed by infantry. Troops in Qalqilya reinforced their positions and began house to house searches. Armored vehicles had already been stationed in Beit Jala, the nearby, largely Christian hilltop village within range of the Jewish district of Gilo.

But for all of Israel's military might, Palestinians struck again Monday, as they have in the past few days in Netanya, Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem. A sniper, firing from Bethlehem, killed an Israeli in Har Homa, a housing development built on land Israel conquered in 1967. A bomber -- the sixth in as many days -- blew up his car near a junction that divides East and West Jerusalem, killing the policeman who stopped him for a check. During the day, at least 15 Israeli soldiers were wounded in fighting.

In all, it was another tense, ugly day that left diplomats in despair. There was no sign of Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, who had been dispatched as the American intermediary.

As the mood hardened, 11 Arabs, most of them pulled from jail cells and accused of ''collaborating'' with Israel, were brutally killed by Palestinians in three separate incidents on the West Bank.

The Israeli Army said tonight that it had rounded up more than 700 people in Ramallah since Friday. The streets here, where Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, was besieged in two rooms of his wrecked headquarters for a fourth day, are eerily empty. Iron gates shutter every shop. Residents are running out of food and water. The hospital is running out of supplies, too -- of food, medicine, bandages, even disposable gloves. Its morgue, with 25 bodies, is full, and the Israelis will not let the bodies be buried.

At midafternoon, a fierce gun battle broke out near Manara Square in the middle of Ramallah. The Israelis used tanks and an antiaircraft gun trained like an artillery piece to pound a building where Palestinian gunmen were holed up. The shelling and automatic weapons fire went on for more than an hour. As night fell, there were the blasts of artillery shells and the clanking of tracked armored vehicles in the streets. Heavy machine gun fire was heard in the city at 4:30 this morning.

About 2 a.m., Israeli tanks and infantry, with helicopters flying overhead, began their attack on Mr. Rajoub's palatial hilltop compound, a state-of-the-art security complex widely believed to have been built with financial help from the United States. The compound had been surrounded by tanks for several days, and the Israeli Army had been putting out word that about 50 wanted men were inside. There were said to be about 400 people in the compound, although Mr. Rajoub himself was not there.

''They are shooting, shooting,'' said a deputy to Mr. Rajoub, Abu Osama, in a brief, tense cellphone conversation from inside the compound. ''Tanks and snipers.''

Mr. Rajoub, like his counterpart in the Gaza Strip, Muhammad Dahlan, had been a crucial figure in the American-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation. On a shelf in his huge office, he kept a picture of George J. Tenet, the Central Intelligence Agency director, and a piece of Jerusalem stone, a gift from Avi Dichter, the head of Israel's secret internal security service, Shin Bet.

During the night, a rocket was launched from Lebanon over the border into northern Israel, the first since Israel withdrew in the face of guerrilla attacks from Hezbollah in the spring of 2000. Hezbollah has been increasingly vocal in support of the Palestinians lately, raising Israeli fears of a two-front war.

As passions and bloodshed mounted, so did protests against Israel -- and America, seen as its backer -- with tens of thousands massing in Cairo and clashing with the police, and with similar scenes at Jordan University in Jordan, which is usually tightly ordered.

Yasir Abed Rabbo, the Palestinian minister of information, accused the United States of abetting the Israeli campaign. ''The United States is supporting the aggression against us, it is as simple as this,'' he said. ''And they believe that they can neutralize the Arabs, the Europeans, and give Sharon the upper hand, and then they can intervene to find a solution. But this will widen the conflict more and more. There will be more bloodshed. There will be no end to this conflict, no end.''

He called it ''the most short-sighted policy I have ever seen.''