The Arab regimes have failed them. The United Nations has failed them. The Europeans have lied to and tricked them. The U.S. has financed and armed Israel making possible the occupation while preventing and vetoing any action to stop it. Their own corrupt and inept leaders (U.S., European, and "client regime" sponsored) have miserably betrayed them while gorging themselves. And so they themselves, the Palestinian people themselves, have been forced to scream out ENOUGH and take up the cry for FREEDOM.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip, Associated Press, 9 March 8:40pm-- Missiles fired by Israeli helicopters early Sunday destroyed Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's seaside office building in the Gaza Strip, witnesses said.

At least 25 missiles fired by Israeli attack helicopters slammed into the compound, collapsing walls. Israeli gunboats also took part in the assault, witnesses said.

The assault came hours after double attacks by Palestinian militants on Israel. In the first attack, a 9-month-old Israeli girl was killed and more than 30 people were wounded by two gunmen in the seafront town of Netanya. A suicide bomber blew himself up shortly after in a crowded cafe in Jerusalem, killing 12 people including himself.

The Israeli military had no immediate comment on the Gaza attack.

The building, next to the Gaza beach on the Mediterranean Sea, was empty, witnesses said. Officials evacuated it on Saturday, after Israeli gunboats started firing machine guns at it.

Besides Arafat's office, the building housed the main studios of Palestine TV and the broadcasting authority's satellite channel. At Arafat's insistence, all news and live discussion programs originated from the studios in his office compound.

Arafat himself has not been at the office for more than three months. He has been trapped in his West Bank headquarters in the town of Ramallah by Israeli forces. Israel insists that he must fulfill a number of conditions, including a crackdown on militants and arrest of the assassins of an Israeli Cabinet minister, before they will allow him freedom of movement.

After Palestinian security arrested a leading suspect in the Oct. 17 assassination, there were calls in Israel to remove the restrictions from Arafat's travels.

The seaside building was known to Gazans as "al-Muntada," or the meeting place. Before Arafat began using it as an office, it was a social club for local residents.

Arafat made his headquarters in Gaza in August 1994 after returning triumphantly from exile under terms of interim peace accords with Israel. At first, the building was a small, three-room structure with an entrance hall.

Builders added a second story. Arafat received world leaders there and held many joint news conferences with them after their talks.

After the Israeli attack, the building was a pile of rubble, witnesses said. Black smoke wafted over large parts of the Rimal neighborhood in Gaza City, where the building was located.

One of the missiles was so powerful that its explosion shook nearby buildings and broke windows in a large area, witnesses said.

[Jerusalem - 6 March - BBC] This intifada is much bloodier than the 1987 uprising Friday has become the bloodiest day in the 17 months of the Palestinian uprising, or intifada, against Israel, with some 50 people reported dead.

Following the killing of five Israeli students by a Palestinian gunman, Israeli forces launched a fresh assault on the territories.

At least 44 Palestinians were killed with Yasser Arafat's security forces bearing the brunt of the casualties.

With the violence raging, Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has said negotiations for a ceasefire with the Palestinians could take place while hostilities continued.

Mr Sharon told Israeli television he had hoped for a period of respite, but what he called a war situation was now being experienced.

However, the BBC's Stephen Cviic in Jerusalem says Mr Sharon's willingness to negotiate a ceasefire does not appear to change his longstanding demand that full peace talks can only happen after a week of what he describes as complete calm.

The fighting erupted just after US President George Bush announced he was sending his peace envoy Anthony Zinni back to the region.

An aide to Mr Arafat, Nabil Abu Rudeina, promptly accused Israel of trying to wreck Mr Zinni's mission next week by waging "all-out war".

Violence raged from the night attack on the students at Atzmona settlement in the Gaza Strip up to Israeli helicopter strikes in the West Bank and Gaza on Friday evening.

The Palestinian dead included a general and a nine-year-old boy while one Israeli soldier was also killed.

Major General Ahmed Mefraj, the deputy Palestinian commander in Gaza, was the most senior Palestinian to be killed since the start of the Intifadah.

He and at least 16 other Palestinians died fighting Israeli troops on a search mission in the Gaza village of Khozza, while another 11 died elsewhere in the strip.

In the West Bank, 11 Palestinians and an Israeli soldier were killed in fighting in the Tulkarm area, where 10 gunmen later surrendered to the Israelis.

Another four Palestinians died around Bethlehem.

Throughout the day, Israeli helicopter gunships were on the attack, with five Palestinians killed in one rocket strike on a Palestinian police base in northern Gaza.

Palestinian medics said in some areas Palestinians bled to death after Israel prevented Palestinian ambulances from reaching victims.

But Israel's West Bank commander, General Yitchak Gershom, said the Palestinians were using ambulances to carry "armed terrorists" around refugee camps.

As darkness fell, gunships were reportedly in action again, striking near Hebron in the West Bank and the Jabalya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip.

Israel has been in shock at the attack on the heavily guarded Jewish settlement of Atzmona in the Gaza Strip.

A Hamas gunman kept up a grenade and gun attack for 20 minutes before being shot dead by Israeli soldiers.

The Israeli army commander in Gaza, Brigadier General Israel Ziv, said Israel was dealing with "people without any morals, any values - a cruel enemy".

On Friday afternoon, Israeli police shot dead a suspected would-be suicide bomber in northern Jerusalem.

Correspondents say the rising death toll and the increasing force of Israeli military action and rhetoric have stung Washington into action.

President Bush called on Mr Arafat to try harder to stop attacks on Israelis and he appealed to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to do everything he could to make Mr Zinni's efforts a success.

US Vice President Dick Cheney will also begin a tour of the region on Sunday.

The Guardian, UK, Saturday March 9, 2002: Even after a day like yesterday that saw the biggest Israeli assault yet on the Palestinians, there was little sign of either side being chastened. The mood among the Israelis and Palestinians appears to be overwhelmingly in favour of violence.

A source in the Israeli administration, reflecting on the options available in the coming months to the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, was pessimistic yesterday: "Israeli public opinion wants Israel to use more violence. And the other side wants more violence from their own people. They want more suicide attacks."

Although another Israeli official yesterday expressed hope that the death toll might prove to be a turning point, the dominant view is that worse is yet to come.

Mr Sharon, a former soldier, has opted to try to hammer the Palestinians into negotiation. He said this week he "intends to hit the Palestinians hard" and yesterday the Israeli army did just that: assaults throughout Gaza and the West Bank produced the highest death toll since the Palestinian uprising began 18 months ago. Instead of a cycle of violence in which the one side reacts to incidents by the other, the Israeli army is engaged in a rolling programme against the Palestinians.

The Israeli prime minister's tactics are to fight a war of attrition, hoping to grind down Palestinian resistance and then enter negotiation with a weakened Palestinian leadership.

He has said publicly that he supports the idea of a Palestinian state but European foreign ministers who have discussed this with him say that the Palestinian state he has in mind is a Bantustan, the artificial homelands created by the apartheid government in South Africa.

He has rejected the two main alternatives. Right-wingers in his cabinet are pushing for him to remove the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, and re-occupy the West Bank and Gaza. The right has even called for the forced removal of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza.

The Israeli army is opposed to reoccupation. Israeli soldiers stationed in Nablus or Ramallah or Gaza City would be permanent targets, symbols of occupation.

The other main alternative, pushed by sections of the Labour party, which is also in his coalition government, is for the withdrawal from Gaza and the West Bank, setting up a Palestinian state and entering quickly into negotiations.

The Israeli foreign minister, Shimon Peres, who is also the most prominent Labour member, is pressing Mr Sharon to accept a plan roughly along these lines. The Palestinian state could be in existence within 12 weeks under his plan.

Mr Sharon, keen to keep Mr Peres in the coalition, has not dismissed it outright, complaining only that the timetable is too quick.

Even if Labour was to leave the coalition, Mr Sharon has enough support left to continue in government. Only if the right was also to desert him would he face a vote of confidence in the Israeli parliament. If more than half the 120-member Israeli parliament voted against him, it would trigger an election.

If Mr Sharon was to fall - and there is little sign of a vote of confidence, a leadership challenge or an early general election - he would almost certainly be replaced by the former prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, whose rhetoric is to the right of Mr Sharon. Mr Netanyahu has been vocal in support of re-occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and toppling Mr Arafat. Mr Peres, who signed the Oslo accords with Mr Arafat a decade ago, argues that the Palestinian leader is the only one who could sell a deal to his people.

Mr Sharon is indifferent to this argument. According to those around him, he believes that he can deal just as readily with the next generation of Palestinian leaders.

The only person outside Israel that Mr Sharon will listen to is the US president, George Bush. Mr Bush has sent his special Middle East envoy, General Anthony Zinni, who is scheduled to arrive in the region early next week.

There is speculation that he may try to persuade Mr Sharon to drop his demand that there be a cessation of Palestinian violence for at least seven days before he will regard the peace process as underway. The US is now believed to favour an immediate start to the peace process.

But Mr Bush is not about to play the part of honest broker that he hinted at in the aftermath of September 11. He will remain Mr Sharon's best friend. In spite of several visits by Mr Sharon to the White House, he has still to invite Mr Arafat.

The Saudi peace plan also now looks doomed, as too much an expression of hope and too short on detail.

Mid-East Realities

www.middleeast.org

Source: http://www.middleeast.org/articles/2002/3/689.htm