Cease-fire collapses as reprisals pick up pace

As Israelis reeled from a devastating shooting attack in downtown Jerusalem late Tuesday, and Palestinians faced unprecedentedly broad army incursions in the West Bank, there was a sense that Middle East violence was again spinning out of control.

Amid the feeling that worse was yet to come, Israelis debated how things had reached this point: Was Palestinian enmity and ill-intent a constant, or had Prime Minister Ariel Sharon triggered the escalation in a bid to avert concessions that would emanate from resumed peace negotiations?

Mr. Sharon continues to enjoy broad public support. But in a sign of increasing skepticism his approach was openly challenged yesterday by the speaker of the Knesset Avraham Burg. Mr. Burg said, if necessary, he would defy the prime minister and would accept an invitation to address the Palestinian legislative council in Ramallah. He was invited to do so yesterday by the council's speaker Ahmad Qurei.

The scene in Jerusalem's Bikur Holim Hospital Tuesday has become all too familiar during the 16 months of the intifada uprising: civilians being treated after Palestinian attacks. Haim Saleh, sitting on his bed, recalled how a Palestinian with an automatic weapon had opened fire on his bus as it pulled out of the station.

"I thought he would finish all of us," he said. "I quickly drove away from him." Fourteen people were wounded and two killed. The gunman, a member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade militia of Arafat's Fatah faction, was shot dead.

The shooting was the latest in a dizzying string of assassinations, attacks, and incursions that has put a definitive end to a cease-fire call by Palestinian President Yasser Arafat issued on Dec. 16. In the Israeli army's view, the cease-fire was simply a lull before Mr. Arafat could spring the next escalation.

The eruption of Palestinian violence started after Raed Karmi, a leader of the militia affiliated with Arafat's Fatah movement, died in an explosion that Israeli analysts - and Palestinian leaders - said was the work of the army.

Immediately afterward there were two deadly roadside attacks by Palestinians in the West Bank. Two days later, a Fatah militiaman and follower of Karmi shot up a bat mitzvah celebration, killing six people.

Israel then expanded its hold in Ramallah and blew up the Palestinian television and radio studios there. Its troops then reoccupied all of Tulkarem, the first time Israel has recaptured all of a Palestinian city - later pulling back to the outskirts.

In Nablus, they took over a neighborhood and killed four members of Hamas in what the army said was a gunfight, but which Palestinian officials said were assassinations. The army said troops had destroyed an explosives workshop.

At each stage of the escalation, there have been mounting voices in Israel arguing that Sharon's government had sabotaged Arafat's cease-fire. The reason, say analysts and opposition politicians, is that a return to negotiations would entail a freeze on the Jewish settlements Sharon has spent much of his political life building and expanding.

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