By
The Associated Press
RAMALLAH, West Bank - Israeli troops rolled out tanks in a show of force and sent helicopter gunships aloft yesterday to battle Palestinians wielding rocks and automatic rifles, as riots raged through the West Bank and Gaza Strip, leaving scarcely a Palestinian town or village untouched.
The spiraling violence, now in its fifth day, has killed at least 51 people and injured more than 1,000, nearly all the casualties Palestinian, and left hopes for a Mideast peace accord in tatters. Both sides acknowledged that talking peace was becoming untenable with a full-scale war being waged in the streets.
In an urgent bid to restore calm, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright announced she would meet tomorrow in Paris with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Even as pleas for restraint poured in from around the world, the climbing casualty count fueled Palestinian fury and spurred revenge attacks against Israeli civilians, particularly Jewish settlers.
On the road to the Jewish settlement of Ariel in the West Bank, a 24-year-old Israeli was shot and killed - reportedly when he stopped to change a tire. A school bus on its way to the Jewish settlement of Shiloh came under fire, but no one was injured.
Fighting also boiled over into Arab towns in Israel proper, rattling the nerves of Israelis who have long feared an intefadeh, or uprising, by Arab citizens of the Jewish state. Eight Israeli Arabs were killed in yesterday's clashes alone.
Police and Arab rioters fought a three-hour battle in the alleyways of the Israeli town of Akko. Rioters trashed shops in the Israeli Arab town of Nazareth, Jesus' boyhood home. In the coastal city of Haifa - often cited as a model of harmonious coexistence of Jews and Muslims - Israeli Arabs staged a general strike in sympathy with Palestinian brethren.
The Palestinian lands, though, remained the epicenter of violence, with a shifting battlefront that hopscotched from north to south and back again. In the West Bank and Gaza, Israeli soldiers fought dozens of running battles - many with live ammunition - with Palestinian youths wielding stones and firebombs.
Near the West Bank town of Tulkarem, rioters set ablaze eight Israeli-owned factories yesterday night, including two making insect spray. The fire sent clouds of noxious fumes over the northern West Bank, and Israeli police said Palestinian gunfire prevented firefighters from reaching the area.
In much of the refugee camp of Rafah in southern Gaza, electricity was cut when Israelis fired an anti-tank missile at a small power plant.
The detritus of conflict could be seen everywhere. Jagged rocks, spent shells, and broken glass littered roadways. Black smoke from piles of burning tires mixed with a white haze of acrid tear gas. The wail of Quranic verses from mosque loudspeakers mingled with the crackle of gunfire.
Israeli civilians were forbidden to travel the main thoroughfares in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. At the isolated Gaza settlement of Netzarim, the army sent a helicopter to retrieve Israelis who had been visiting for the Jewish New Year holiday. Army convoys escorted others out. An Israeli soldier who accompanied an Israeli gasoline truck driver on a West Bank delivery was critically wounded by Palestinian fire and later died, the army said.
The growing use of heavy combat weapons by Israel contributed to the phenomenon of mass casualties from a single incident. Near Netzarim, the firing of one antitank missile into a building injured 35 Palestinians, hospital officials said.
Israel has not fired from battle tanks at rioters, but has deployed them near the West Bank towns of Ramallah and Nablus, scene of some of the worst fighting, to intimidate its foes. Helicopter gunships hovered over the fighting in Nablus. Near Netzarim, the gunships opened fire.
While the Israelis have overwhelming military superiority, Palestinians have ratcheted up the firepower as well.
During the 1987-92 uprising that eventually culminated in the start of the peace process, Palestinians were armed with little more than makeshift weapons of stones and slingshots. Now the territories are awash in guns, including automatic weapons carried by Palestinian police, who at times have joined in the fighting, turning their fire on Israeli troops.
Although the vast majority of Palestinian rioters wield only stones and bottles, sophisticated arms such as sniper rifles and automatic weapons have increasingly come into play. Some fighters protect themselves with flak jackets.
The street battle were sparked by a visit last week by Ariel Sharon, the leader of the hard-line opposition Likud party, to a Jerusalem shrine revered by both Muslims and Jews that is at the center of the deadlock in Mideast peace talks.
On both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide, airwaves were dominated by nonstop battle bulletins, and rhetoric from both sides reflected a growing public sense that events had moved to a war footing.
Barak, who traveled into the West Bank to hold a news conference near Ramallah, was asked if the peace process could move ahead while the fighting went on at this level.
"Clearly not for long," the former general replied.
Faisal Husseini, the top Palestinian official for Jerusalem affairs, said that to restore calm, the Israeli army would have to pull out of "all areas that were occupied during the incidents" of recent days.
In Nablus, a pair of young Palestinian rioters - hands covered with the dust of stones they had hurled all day - said the risk of death or injury meant little to them.
"President Arafat was in long negotiations with the Israelis ... and nothing was achieved," said one of them, a 20-year-old factory worker who refused to give his name. "When we throw stones, when we attack the Israelis, it is better than negotiations."
