Israel ready to discuss cease-fire

JERUSALEM -- With Mideast violence at its worst levels in 17 months of fighting, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Sunday he was prepared to negotiate with Palestinians on a truce but won't call off the current army offensive against militants.

The Israeli leader spoke hours after Israeli helicopters pounded Yasser Arafat's two-story, seaside office in the Gaza Strip to rubble. The Palestinian office had been evacuated before the helicopter attack, and no one was hurt.

'Wave of terror'

The helicopter attack was retaliation for a Palestinian suicide attack that killed 11 others near Sharon's Jerusalem residence.

"We are in a war," Sharon told his Cabinet ministers, some of whom are demanding even tougher action. "All of us must stay united and make every effort to stand up to this wave of terror."

In renewed violence Sunday, three Palestinians and one Israeli were killed in scattered clashes in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The United States is pressing for a cease-fire, and U.S. Mideast envoy Anthony Zinni is to visit the region this week for his third attempt in recent months to work out a truce.

"He's going to stay in the region and fight his way through this," Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday on CBS's "Face the Nation." "We're not going to allow acts of violence to stop Gen. Zinni from doing his work."

Vice President Dick Cheney, meanwhile, was heading Sunday to the Middle East.

Cheney will discuss Middle East violence "at every stop," Powell said.

Sharon has dropped his demand for a week of complete calm before talking about a cease-fire, but made clear the current Israeli military offensive will press ahead.

"We want to make every effort to achieve a cease-fire," Sharon said. "At the same time, we are continuing with our operations ... and if the terror continues our operations will continue."

Offer of peace

In Egypt, meanwhile, Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal offered Israel "complete peace from Arab nations" in exchange for Israeli withdrawal from Arab lands captured in 1967, and the creation of an independent Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital.

Al-Faisal, who spoke after meeting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, offered the most detailed Saudi comments on the kingdom's overture to Israel since it was first made public last month. Israel has expressed strong reservations, but said it is willing to explore the proposal.

Palestinians said the Jerusalem bombing and a shooting attack at a seafront hotel in Netanya, both on Saturday night, were a consequence of Israel's stepped-up military campaign. Recent Israeli raids in several refugee camps have resulted in many civilian casualties.

In the worst spate of violence since the fighting erupted in September 2000, more than 120 Palestinians and more than 50 Israelis have been killed in the first 10 days of March.

In a highly symbolic response to the Saturday night attacks, Israeli helicopters and gunboats fired more than two dozen missiles at Arafat's large Gaza City compound before dawn Sunday, collapsing most of the two-story office headquarters into a pile of rubble.

Arafat was not in the compound; he has been confined by Israel to the town of Ramallah in the West Bank.

After the attack, workers went through the debris to salvage documents in the complex, one of the leading symbols of the Palestinian aspirations for statehood.

An officer in Arafat's personal security unit wept upon seeing the wreckage. "This went from being a small social club to being the house of the nation, and look at it now," said Lt. Mohammed Youssef.

Arafat had received world leaders, including former U.S. President Bill Clinton and the late King Hussein of Jordan, at the building.

Elsewhere in Gaza, a Palestinian opened fire at Israelis at the gate of a Jewish settlement, fatally wounding a soldier and injuring a security guard before being shot to death. The Al Aqsa Brigades, a militia affiliated with Arafat's Fatah party, took responsibility for the shooting.

At a checkpoint just north of Jerusalem in the West Bank, the army said Israeli troops shot and killed a Palestinian with a backpack who ignored an order to stop walking toward the soldiers. It said the man was carrying an automatic rifle and grenades in his backpack, though Palestinians claimed he was unarmed.

Near the West Bank town of Nablus, a 13-year-old boy was shot dead when Israeli soldiers fired on stone-throwing youths, Palestinian officials said.

In the latest of several recent Israeli incursions into Palestinian refugee camps, soldiers searched house-to-house Sunday for militants in the Dheisheh refugee camp on the edge of Bethlehem in the West Bank.

Reporters were shown what the army said was a bomb factory, and the troops then blew up the two story building where it was located.

Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai called for a nonstop war against the Palestinians. "We must keep up the attacks by land, sea and air until they ask for a cease-fire," he told Israel TV.