The fight for Israel

ENIN, West Bank -- From a West Bank army base overlooking the scene of the deadliest fighting in Israel's 13-day-old offensive, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Wednesday delivered a blunt message: Israel will not pull back until Palestinian militias are crushed.\nDespite his pledge to continue the offensive in the face of intense U.S. and international pressure to call it off, Sharon's defense ministry announced late Wednesday troops were pulling out of West Bank villages of Yatta, Qabatya and Samua.\nThen early Thursday, Israeli forces and tanks rolled into the central West Bank town of Ber Zeit -- north of the commercial center of Ramallah -- and troops quickly occupied the police station and began doing house-to-house searches, witnesses said. The soldiers met no resistance, they said.\nYatta and Samua are near the southern city of Hebron, and Qabatya is near the northern city of Jenin, where some of the most fierce fighting has been reported.\nThe White House supported the withdrawal and said the Palestinians should respond.\n"The burden isn't Israel's alone. All parties have responsibilities," spokesman Ari Fleischer said.\nAlso Wednesday night, Israeli soldiers killed two Palestinians armed with grenades and Kalashnikov rifles near the Kisufim crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip, the military said.\nSharon's statement earlier Wednesday defied increasingly impatient U.S. demands for a withdrawal from Palestinian towns -- to be delivered in person Friday by Secretary of State Colin Powell -- and came hours after an Islamic militant blew himself up on a bus in northern Israel, killing himself and eight passengers.\nSpeaking to cheering soldiers at a post overlooking the battered Jenin refugee camp, Sharon said he explained to President Bush that "we are in the middle of a battle" which, if abandoned prematurely, would only require another round of fighting later on.\n"Once we finish, we are not going to stay here," the former general said. "But first we have to accomplish our mission." He added that unless Israel crushed the militants, the phenomenon of suicide bombings "could spread like a plague around the world."\nEarlier in the day, Israel's Security Cabinet affirmed the decision to continue the offensive. By nightfall, resistance was subdued in the Jenin camp -- where fighting has raged for days and where 13 Israeli soldiers were killed Tuesday in a sophisticated Palestinian ambush -- and in the old town of Nablus, the largest West bank city.\nPowell insisted his peacekeeping mission was not threatened by Sharon's refusal to halt the incursions. "My mission is not in the least in jeopardy," he told reporters in Spain.\nSharon has branded Arafat the leader of a "regime of terror" and has suggested he would no longer do business with him. However, Powell reiterated Wednesday that the United States would continue dealing with Arafat.\nPalestinian Parliament Speaker Ahmed Qureia said the Palestinians would demand that Powell secure an immediate Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian areas and that U.S. mediators come up with a timetable for carrying out a cease-fire.\nIsrael withdrew from two Palestinian towns earlier this week, but its forces remained in four others.\nIn the Jenin refugee camp, dozens of gunmen holed up in a small area fired sporadically Wednesday morning at Israeli troops advancing with bulldozers. A local leader of the militant group Hamas, Jamal Abdel Salam, quoted one gunman as telling him by phone: "We are in a group inside a house. They (the Israelis) are at the door and they are coming to arrest us. Take care of my family."\nLater Wednesday, about 300 camp residents, including armed men, women and children, surrendered to Israeli troops. An Associated Press photographer driving through the camp saw many building facades with wreckingball-sized holes from Israeli shelling. Streets were deserted, and there was no sign of Palestinian resistance.\nMore than 100 Palestinians are believed to have been killed in the Jenin camp, and many bodies remain in the streets. Among those reported dead was Mahmoud Tawalbeh, a 23-year-old leader of the militant Islamic Jihad group who masterminded a number of suicide bombings.\nIn Nablus, rescue workers on Wednesday retrieved the bodies of 14 Palestinians, bringing the total of dead in the city since the start of the Israeli invasion to 60. The old city of Nablus, a warren of narrow alleys, had been the scene of fierce battles for days.\nAnd in Bethlehem, a standoff continued at one of Christianity's holiest sites, the Church of the Nativity. An Armenian monk in the compound was seriously wounded, and Israeli troops and armed Palestinians blamed each other for the shooting.\nIsrael's Security Cabinet on Wednesday repeated its earlier position -- that the siege will continue until the gunmen surrender. The Palestinian Authority has not commented on the plan.