JERUSALEM (REUTERS) — U.S. envoy Anthony Zinni was due to arrive in the Middle East Thursday as Israel pressed on with a sweeping offensive against the Palestinians that threatened to undermine his truce mission.
President Bush highlighted international concern that cease-fire efforts could be jeopardized by the broadest Israeli assault on Palestinian areas in decades.
“It’s not helpful what the Israelis have recently done, in order to create conditions for peace,” Bush told a news conference. “I understand someone trying to defend themselves and to fight terror but the recent actions aren’t helpful.”
Also in Washington, administration and congressional sources said the Bush administration is blocking a request from Israel for hundreds of millions of dollars in new aid.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon forged ahead with the military operations to continue to seek out militants behind now daily attacks on Israelis in a 17-month-old Palestinian uprising.
But in a sign that Israel might be loosening its two-day grip on Ramallah, the West Bank power base of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, several dozen Israeli tanks and armored vehicles were seen pulling out from the city center and exiting its southern entrance, a Reuters correspondent said.
Israeli military sources said they knew of no withdrawal taking place and suggested the movement of the tanks — roughly half the force that entered Ramallah and its environs late Monday — could be a tactical change of positions.
HOLDING POSITIONS
Israeli troops also held firm to positions in the West Bank towns of Qalqilya and Bethlehem seized since the wider assault began two weeks ago.
An officer in Arafat’s guard, an Israeli lieutenant and an Italian photographer were killed in gunbattles in Ramallah. Soldiers shot dead a Palestinian militant near a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip.
European Commission chief Romano Prodi and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan both strongly condemned the Israeli actions. Sweden condemned what it said was the Israeli army’s “targeting” of Palestinian ambulances and the killing of medical personnel.
Amid the worsening spiral of Middle East violence, Israel had sought $800 million beyond its usual $3 billion in annual U.S. assistance, and the administration gave serious consideration to providing $200 million.
But the request raised concerns over the major Israeli offensive against Palestinians, the high level of U.S. aid already given to Israel and the war on terrorism’s growing strain on the U.S. budget, the sources said.
“It’s not going to happen. OMB (the White House Office of Management and Budget) nixed it,” a congressional aide told Reuters of the Israeli request.
OMB declined to comment.
Arafat’s Palestinian Authority said Zinni’s mission would be doomed as long as Israeli forces stayed in Ramallah, a city of 200,000 and the West Bank’s commercial and political hub.
At least 1,058 Palestinians and 341 Israelis have been killed since the uprising against Israeli occupation began in September 2000 after peace talks froze.
BUSH STILL HOPES ZINNI WILL MAKE PROGRESS
Zinni’s visit marks his third attempt since November to end the bloodletting that has overshadowed a current Middle East tour by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney in an attempt to gain Arab support for campaign to put pressure on Iraq.
“He’s got a lot of work to do but if I didn’t think he could make progress, I wouldn’t have asked him to go,” Bush said.
Palestinian information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo said a cease-fire was impossible “as long as (Israelis) are occupying Ramallah and as long as they are putting snipers on the roofs of buildings in the city to kill and target civilians.”
In one Ramallah neighborhood, just north of Jerusalem, Israeli jeeps blared warnings in Arabic that anyone caught on the streets would be shot.
Sharon sent 20,000 troops into the West Bank and Gaza.
Some 150 armored vehicles had thrust into Ramallah and nearby refugee camps as part of Israel’s biggest offensive in the West Bank and Gaza since it captured them in 1967.
In the West Bank, two masked Palestinians entered a home in the Jewish settlement of Nahliel, stabbing and seriously wounding a settler, Israeli security sources said.
Terje Roed-Larsen, top U.N. official in the West Bank and Gaza, said Annan had taken the unusual step of sending a letter to Sharon expressing distress and concern at developments.
FIRST FOREIGN NEWSMAN KILLED
Freelance photographer Raffaele Ciriello, 42, shot several times in the chest Wednesday, became the first foreign journalist killed covering the 17-month-long conflict.
A colleague with him when he was killed said Ciriello was shot by Israeli soldiers who apparently mistook him for one of several Palestinian gunmen standing nearby.
Israel said it was investigating whether Israelis or Palestinians had shot him. Italy summoned Israel’s ambassador and asked him for a full explanation of events.
