Israeli troops are now occupying or blockading all the major cities in the West Bank designated as "Palestinian-ruled" under the 1993 Oslo agreements, with the exception of Jericho and Hebron.

The Israeli forces have faced broad defiance and armed resistance, especially in Bethlehem. Thousands of Palestinians gathered in Manger square October 19 for a funeral procession for Atef Obaiyat, the victim of a car explosion two days earlier that many suspected was the work of Israeli agents. Assassination of Palestinian leaders, called "targeted killings" by the government, are frequently carried out by Tel Aviv's forces.

Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon seized on the October 17 killing of Rehavam Zeevi, the minister of tourism, as grounds for sharply escalating the scale and scope of Israeli's military actions against the Palestinians.

Zeevi was an outspoken rightist and the most prominent advocate of the removal of 3 million Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He likened Palestinians working without papers in Israel to "lice" and a "cancer" that had to be eradicated, and regularly heckled Palestinian representatives during their speeches in the Knesset.

On October 15 Zeevi had announced his decision to resign from the cabinet "to protest what he regarded as Sharon's timid military response to Palestinian attacks," wrote the Washington Post. Following his killing members of his National Union party reneged on the decision, saying they would stay in the government coalition to "give the government a chance to prove its mettle."

Sharon, echoing U.S. president George Bush's cover for war, said, "We will wage all-out war on the terrorists, those who collaborate with them and those who send them."  
 
Ultimatum to Palestinian Authority
Hours after Zeevi's death, Sharon's cabinet issued an ultimatum to the Palestinian Authority leader Yasir Arafat. Declaring that "a new era has begun," Sharon insisted that Arafat "hand over [Zeevi's] killers and dismantle terror organizations, or face a response more severe than any recent attack on the Palestinians," according to the Washington Post. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) has claimed responsibility for Zeevi's killing. One of its long-time central leaders, Mustafa Zibri, was assassinated by Israeli forces, which shot a missile from a helicopter into Zibri's office to kill him August 27. The PFLP belongs to the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Pressing to justify Israel's repression of the Palestinians, Israeli embassy spokesman Mark Regev told the press that the PFLP has "an office in Damascus and it functions freely in the Palestinian Authority [PA]. Are not both Syria and the PA, in giving safe haven and acquiescence to this terrorist group, acting in a similar way as the Taliban in giving safe cover to terrorists?"

In response to Tel Aviv's demands, the Palestinian Authority, headed by Yasir Arafat, has outlawed the PFLP's military wing and arrested 33 PFLP members in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. "Every effort is being exerted by...President Arafat to bring those who killed Mr. Zeevi to justice under Palestinian law," said senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat. The PA authorities, however, say they will conduct trials on their own territory, and refuse to "extradite" any of those they have arrested.

PA figures have repeatedly called for the intervention of the United Nations and the U.S. government to help restart negotiations. "We need to come back to the negotiating table immediately without condition," said Erakat.

The Alternative Information Center, an anti-Zionist Israeli organization with offices in the occupied territories, described the recent Israeli military assault on the West Bank as a "major-scale invasion" in a newsletter written as the offensive was unfolding.

"On October 18, 2001, at 5:15 a.m.," it reported, "the Israeli Defense Forces began to deploy tanks into Palestinian territories and bombarded civilians [with] tank fire and heavy machine-gun fire. Israel laid under siege the Palestinian cities of Ramallah, El Bireh, Jenin, Nablus, and the area of Al-Azeria, near Jerusalem....

"During the night of October 18th, Israeli tanks, engineering corps and infantry entered Palestinian Authority-controlled areas in Bethlehem, Beit Jala, and Beit Sahur.... Three civilians were killed in their homes as a consequence of Israeli shelling.

"These attacks and invasions follow a pattern of Israeli retaliations to Palestinian actions using collective punishment and excessive force: indiscriminate shelling of Palestinian civil targets, extrajudicial execution of suspected Palestinian activists, blockades and sieges of Palestinian cities and villages, home demolition, and crop destruction.... At least 64 percent of Palestinian casualties were non-fighting civilians, one-third of them minors under the age of 18."

While the Israeli government disavows any "ideological or strategic decision...to conquer these areas and stay there," in the words of Cabinet Minister Tsipi Livni, it has put no time limit on the occupation. "Everything depends on...how the Palestinian Authority will react," Livni said on October 20.

"If they act to prevent terror, Yasir Arafat and the PA can reduce the amount of time we stay there," cabinet secretary Gideon Sa'ar said, repeating the terms of Sharon's October 17 ultimatum.

Sharon tried to curry favor with the U.S. government by presenting the offensive as a counterpoint to Washington's brutal assault on Afghanistan, waged under the banner of the "war on terrorism." He appealed to the imperialist powers' common interests, suggesting "that Israel and the United States were waging symmetrical fights [and] calling Israel the 'U.S. bridgehead in the Middle East,'" reported the New York Times.

U.S. State Department spokesperson Philip Reeker stated October 22 that "Israeli Defense Forces should be withdrawn immediately from all Palestinian-controlled areas, and no further such incursions should be made." Tel Aviv responded that their military forces would remain until their demands on the Palestinian Authority were met.

The same day, Israeli artillery and warplanes bombarded Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah soldiers have also fired at Israeli soldiers in the Shebaa farms area occupied by the Israeli military on the border of Lebanon and the Golan Heights, which was seized by Tel Aviv from Syria in the 1967 war. The attack by warplanes firing air-to-surface missiles was the first since July, when Israeli fighter jets struck Syrian army positions in eastern Lebanon.  
 
 
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