OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 17 December — The Israelis continued their aggression yesterday by blasting a Palestinian police command center and a Palestinian intelligence center in the Jebaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza Strip in the morning as President Yasser Arafat called on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to stop the "brutal war" against the Palestinian Authority.
President Arafat also called in an address to his people yesterday for a halt to all armed activities against Israelis, including bombings.
"I today reiterate (a call for) the complete and immediate cessation of all military activities. I renew the call to completely halt any activities, especially attacks which we have condemned and always condemned," Arafat said.
It was not immediately clear whether Arafat’s reaffirmation would lead Sharon, who has cut ties with the Palestinian leader and declared him irrelevant, to resume contacts or cease a military campaign that has included air raids and tank incursions.
Speaking on Palestinian television, Arafat urged Israel to return to peace talks as the sole means to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and said he wanted a Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital, next to the Jewish state.
Arafat said the Palestinian Authority had already declared illegal "groups that carry out terrorist activities". Reaffirming a US-brokered truce that never took hold, Arafat pledged to hunt down and punish those behind armed attacks.
"We will punish all (the) planners and executors...and we will hunt down the violators," Arafat said, adding that his Palestinian Authority "will only allow one authority on this land. In this complicated conflict...we must not allow anyone to shake the credibility of the (Palestinian) leadership and its decisions," Arafat said.
The Palestinians, he added, posed no threat to Israel’s existence.
"I renew my call to the people of Israel and to its political forces and institutions and government to immediately return to the negotiating table and to immediately work on ending these dangerous, racist measures against our people."
"I know what Sharon is aiming at," he said, accusing the Israeli leader of wanting an escalation of his war on our villages and towns, occupying our land, carrying out assassinations."
Arafat, looking far more assured than in recent television interviews from his besieged offices in the West Bank town of Ramallah, slammed bombings in particular, a direct attack on the groups that have used them to spark the massive Israeli backlash.
Reacting to Arafat’s speech, Israeli government spokesman Raanan Gissin said Arafat must follow up words with action.
"Words will not do. There has to be deeds. He has to make the arrests to stop the terrorists on their way already to conduct terrorist activity in Jerusalem and Haifa and Beer Sheva," Gissin told reporters.
"And he has the names. He has the list, he knows exactly what to do. I would put a moratorium on declarations. Just do what you need to do," he said in a skeptical response to Arafat’s televised address to his people. He also told CNN television that the sudden lull in violence that marked the end of Ramadan yesterday proved that Arafat can control the violence in the Palestinian territories when he wants to.
Meanwhile, the morning raid caused no injuries, but damage was reported to both buildings. Israeli troops have killed at least 13 Palestinians since Friday, most of them during a two-day sweep for suspected activists across the West Bank and Gaza Strip in which more than 75 Palestinians were arrested. The latest airstrike took place on the first day of Eid Al-Fitr.
Two helicopters fired four missiles at a Palestinian police station and preventive security office in Jabaliya refugee camp, police said. There were no injuries.
The escalating violence, some of the most intense in a nearly 15-month-old Palestinian uprising in which more than 1,000 people have died, has derailed a peace mission by US envoy Anthony Zinni. Palestinians said an 11-year-old boy died yesterday of wounds sustained in clashes last week with Israeli soldiers in the Kalandia refugee camp in the West Bank.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell said yesterday Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat still speaks for the Palestinian people. "I will continue to talk to Chairman Arafat," Powell told CNN. "He is the recognized head of the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian people see him as a leader."
In Cairo, Arab League Secretary-General Amr Mussa voiced surprise and concern at the US veto of a UN Security Council resolution on the Middle East crisis, the MENA news agency reported yesterday.
