Israel Kills Key Palestinian; Arafat Holds Talks in U.S.

BETHLEHEM, West Bank —  In a significant shift in tactics, Israel targeted and killed a senior Palestinian militia commander Thursday, sending a helicopter gunship to track the man’s vehicle through a crowded village and then open fire with rockets. At least two bystanders were also killed.

The helicopter attack came as Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat arrived in Washington for talks with President Clinton aimed at ending six weeks of deadly violence and gauging whether peace negotiations can resume. The attack near the biblical town of Bethlehem cast a pall over Arafat’s visit.

After the two-hour discussion, Arafat told reporters at the White House that he had recommitted to peace, but he seemed to shift the onus of action to Israel.

“We are facing a very dangerous situation that is really hindering the peace process,” Arafat said. “I am not the one who initiated the violence. I am not the one who is attacking Israelis. My tanks are not sieging Israeli towns. I did not order my tanks, my air force, my artillery, my heavy weapons, my navy.”

Leaders of Arafat’s Fatah political movement branded Thursday’s attack a premeditated assassination and vowed revenge. The helicopter raid followed days of warnings that the Jewish state would take more aggressive steps to crush the armed Palestinian insurrection.

The man killed, identified as Hussein Abeiat, was a senior field marshal in Fatah’s armed wing. His deputy, in the car with him, was seriously wounded in the explosion and fire triggered by the rocketing, as were five or six bystanders. Two Palestinian homemakers, women in their 50s, were killed, one as she walked near the road and another who reportedly was sitting in her home.

The Israeli helicopter pursued Abeiat’s vehicle in the Palestinian-controlled village of Beit Sahur, just outside Bethlehem and the site of frequent exchanges of gunfire between Palestinians and Israeli forces. It opened fire as the vehicle traveled through the town.

Israeli military officers said Abeiat was armed at the time and had been identified as the mastermind of a ring that was responsible for recent attacks on Israelis, including shootouts that have killed three Israeli soldiers and targeted a Jewish neighborhood called Gilo south of Jerusalem.

Israeli army Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Eitan, head of the Central Command, said the strike was ordered by “high levels” of the Israeli government. He said the operation was based on good intelligence information and “performed with accuracy” despite the civilian casualties.

Under international law, Israel is obliged to take all necessary precautions to avoid “collateral” damage--that is, death, injury or property damage involving noncombatants. The strike was a throwback to much-criticized tactics used by Israel in Lebanon.

“We will continue to hit at those trying to hit us,” Eitan said during a briefing for reporters. “We would have preferred to encounter him elsewhere, like in an unpopulated desert, but that is not our reality.”

With the death toll in six weeks of violence climbing toward the 200 mark, the vast majority of victims Palestinian, Fatah leaders called Thursday’s attack a cowardly aggression.

“Israel has entered a new phase by killing innocent civilians for no reason,” said Hussein Sheikh, Fatah’s West Bank leader. “Our response will be harsh.”

Fatah, the largest faction within the Palestine Liberation Organization, has been at the helm of often violent demonstrations against Israeli occupation of parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Its armed militias have been one feature that has distinguished the current intifada from the earlier uprising against military rule in the late 1980s and early ‘90s. On Oct. 30, Israel rocketed Fatah offices in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank towns of Ramallah and Nablus, but no one was hurt in those raids.

“Everyone who takes part in trying to hurt us should know that he will not get away with it,” Israeli army chief of staff Lt. Gen. Shaul Mofaz said Thursday as he visited wounded soldiers. Asked about the timing of the helicopter attack, with Arafat at the White House, Mofaz said: “We will act against anyone with the blood of soldiers and citizens on his hands, at all times.”

In Washington, the prospects for serious movement in the talks with Arafat--and upcoming ones with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak on Sunday--were reflected in new diplomatic language. The White House has dropped talk of the “peace process” and replaced it with talk of just trying to get the two sides to engage in a political process.

“It’s a psychological reality. Peace looks [a] little elusive right now, so people are looking at what we accomplish politically since the idea of a full peace seems a little remote these days,” said one weary senior U.S. official who requested anonymity in accordance with Clinton administration policy.

The primary focus of the latest round of talks is finding a way to get the two sides to follow through on pledges made at a summit in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el Sheik last month, including a cease-fire agreement that has had little effect on the unrest.

“Violence breeds violence, and we must find a way to break this cycle,” National Security Advisor Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger said shortly before Clinton’s meeting with Arafat. “And it is important for people on both sides to do all they can to try to achieve that.”

U.S. officials rebuffed Arafat’s efforts to mobilize support for a United Nations force to separate Israeli soldiers and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, which the Palestinians feel is the only way to end the latest wave of violence. Israel is strongly opposed to the idea.

“Something like this can only be done with the consent of both parties,” Berger said. As a result, Washington does not want to divert attention from the goal of bringing the violence under control, he said.

At the State Department, spokesman Richard Boucher said the United States doesn’t believe that “this is the time” for U.N. initiatives or resolutions.

“We don’t think that’s where the solution lies,” he said.

Thursday’s talks came amid a growing sense in Washington that time has run out for Clinton to make any significant progress in a process he thought might prove to be his most lasting foreign policy legacy.

Berger said the president remains committed to using whatever time is available in his remaining 10 weeks in office to reduce the violence and spur the resumption of the political process.

But the general tenor of Thursday’s talks was reflected by White House spokesman P.J. Crowley after Arafat left. “We continue to be frustrated,” he said.

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Marshall reported from Bethlehem and Wright from Washington. Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson in Jerusalem contributed to this report.