Dozens of Palestinian and left-wing Israeli demonstrators clashed with police after they tried to pass through a police blockade in front of Orient House, which was occupied earlier Friday by Israel.
The demonstrators threw stones at the police, injuring one of the policemen. Six of the demonstrators were arrested when police tried to disperse the demonstration. The Israeli army declared the area a closed military area, according to Haaretz.
Israeli Internal Security Minister Uzi Landau visited Orient House in east Jerusalem the Israeli move, following the suicide bombing Thursday in Jerusalem in which 15 people were killed. The dead were buried the same day.
Landau claimed that the move was “an enforcement of the law in Jerusalem.”
"From the moment we start enforcing the law in Jerusalem and prevent the flying of the Palestinian flag and processions through the streets of the city, we will also be able to limit the terror," he said.
Ahmed Abdel-Rahman, a senior aide to Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, told Reuters that Israel's move violated an interim peace deal reached in 1993.
"The Israeli occupation of the Orient House aims to destroy all agreements signed since 1993," Abdel-Rahman said.
"The Palestinian people are left without choice but to escalate resistance and Intifada [uprising] to liberate holy Jerusalem and regain the Orient House and other Palestinian institutions occupied by Israel," he added.
The security cabinet decided in its Thursday night meeting to seize control of Palestinian Authority offices in east Jerusalem, targeting Orient House and the governor's house in Abu Dis. The cabinet also authorized an F16 attack on a Palestinian police station in Ramallah, according to reports on Israel Radio, cited by the paper.
An Israeli diplomatic official said cabinet ministers had decided to set up new Israeli police stations in east Jerusalem and uproot Palestinian security services operating in its environs.
The decision was reached with a majority of nine ministers in favor of the moves. The three Labor ministers Shimon Peres, Matan Vilnai and Ephraim Sneh voted against the measures and Justice Minister Meir Sheetrit (Likud) abstained. Two ministers who are overseas at the moment, Natan Sharansky ((Yisrael B'Aliyah) and Eli Yishai (Shas) approved the actions by telephone.
During the meeting, Foreign Minister Peres said there was a need to enter negotiations with the Palestinians, warning, "If we don't sit and negotiate with the Arabs they will be a majority here within ten years."
Opposition head Yossi Sarid was quoted by the daily as condemning the decision saying that the move against Orient House had no connection to the terror, "no terrorist came from there." He added, "[Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon has a tendency for inflammatory acts in Jerusalem."
Palestinian MP for Jerusalem Hatem Abdul Qader told Al Jazeera satellite channel that temporary offices will be set to "keep the Palestinian presence," in the occupied city.
He had told AFP that "this is an occupation of the place and an attempt to impose the status quo" of Israeli domination over the Palestinian territories.
"We will resist this occupation," he said.
Earlier Friday, Israel launched swift and hard-hitting retaliatory strikes, hours after a Palestinian suicide bombing killed up to 18 people in Jerusalem and injured dozens more, said AFP.
Warplanes blitzed Palestinian police headquarters in the West Bank and tanks moved into the Gaza Strip.
An F-16 fighter jet fired three missiles at the Ramallah police station. The building, located in the west of the city, had been evacuated in anticipation of an Israeli attack, Palestinian security officials said.
They told the agency that no one was injured in the attack, but that "80 percent" of the building was damaged. The office serves as the Palestinian police headquarters for the West Bank.
Visiting the site, President Yasser Arafat said such attack make the Palestinians stronger.
Meanwhile, Israeli tanks moved almost a kilometer (half a mile) into Palestinian territory in the Gaza Strip, shelling and destroying a Palestinian security position, said Palestinian officials.
Israel says the Palestinian Authority, led by Arafat, is partly responsible for bomb attacks on Israelis, accusing it of inciting bombers and refusing to clamp down on "terrorists".
The strike in Ramallah was the first time since May 18 that Israel has used war planes and not attack helicopters to strike Palestinian targets. Three planes struck the West Bank after a Palestinian attack that left nine dead and around 60 injured.
Meanwhile, residents in Bethlehem reported seeing Israeli Apache helicopters over that West Bank town, south of Jerusalem.
Witnesses in Jenin, in the northern West Bank, told AFP they had seen heavy movement of Israeli forces, including tanks and armored troop carriers, on the edge of town.
The Jerusalem bombing, long feared by Israelis as the government stoked Palestinian outrage with its policy of killing militants deemed a security threat, brought swift retribution from hawkish Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
He summoned his security cabinet just hours after the blast caused chaos and carnage in the heart of the city, and gave the green light to a "severe armed response," political sources said.
His more conciliatory foreign minister, Shimon Peres, was opposed to a large-scale military reaction, the sources said.
One senior government source had said as the meeting was underway that the response would mete out a "proportionate" response to the "horrendous" crime perpetrated against the Jewish state.
The bombing was the worst attack on Jerusalem in the Palestinian Intifada, pushing the death toll for the 10-month wave of violence past the 700 mark.
The dead included five members of the same family of Jewish settlers from the West Bank, with both parents and three children wiped out by the blast, according to relatives.
A total of six children were killed, Israeli public television said.
The Jerusalem Post reported that the dead included two tourists, a 31-year-old woman from the United States and a 60-year-old man from Brazil.
The attack was claimed by two separate Palestinian groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Hamas has lost at least nine activists in the past month to Israel's policy of killing Palestinian militants it accuses of planning deadly attacks on Israelis.
Hamas said its suicide bomber Izzedine Shahin Al Masri was the man killed, along with 17 others, when he detonated a powerful nail-bomb in a crowded pizzeria at lunchtime.
The group said that Islamic Jihad's "suicide bomber" was still alive.
AFP said earlier that an Islamic Jihad unit called the Salaheddine Al Ayyoubi Brigades had initially claimed responsibility for the pizzeria bombing, in a statement faxed to its Amman office.
But the group later emailed a correction to Albawaba.com, saying the bombing was carried out by the military wing of Islamic Jihad, the Jerusalem Brigades, and that there was no such unit as the Salaheddine Al Ayyoubi Brigades.
In a later fax, the Islamic Jihad identified the resistance fighter as Hussein Omar Abu Amsha, 23, from Jenin in the West Bank.
The assassinations, described by Israel as "self-defense" to ward off further killings of Israelis, have been condemned by the international community and drawn urgent pleas from the Palestinians for international observers to be deployed in their territories.
Top Arafat aide Nabil Abu Rudeina called the Israeli operations "a dangerous escalation that will lead us to catastrophe."
"I ask the world community and mainly the United States to intervene and put an end to this dangerous escalation, and in particular to the occupation of Orient House," he said.
Israeli retaliation came after US Secretary of State Colin Powell described the situation as "very dangerous" and called for restraint.
US President George W. Bush, vacationing in Texas, vigorously condemned what he called the "cowardly" Palestinian attack in west Jerusalem.
According to BBC correspondent, Bush's reaction was unusual as he used the word "terrorist" three times in such a brief statement -- Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
