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CNN Live At Daybreak
Colin Powell Will Arrive in Middle East Thursday
Aired April 11, 2002 - 05:10 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Colin Powell will arrive in the Middle East Thursday. He'll arrive in Israel late Thursday.
Our Jerrold Kessel is standing by in Jerusalem right now -- Jerrold, what's happening there right now, because we understand that the Israeli military has invaded several other Palestinian towns?
JERROLD KESSEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Interesting developments overnight, Carol, and I think they play very much into what the secretary of state was saying there in that news conference in advance of his arrival here. He will arrive later tonight and begin his meetings with the Israelis, Prime Minister Sharon and other top Israeli officials tomorrow. And on Saturday he meets with Yasser Arafat in Ramallah.
What's happened overnight, two significant developments. One, the very heavy fighting in the refugee camp of Jenin seems to be over because earlier this morning some 29 of the last pocket, it seems, of Palestinians who were resisting in Jenin have withdraw -- have given themselves up to the Israelis. Some of them were gunmen. Some of them were civilians, it seemed. There was a mediation by an Israeli human rights activists and there was a safe surrender. Some were taken into, apprehended by the Israelis for questioning we understand.
But it does seem as if the fighting that has been raging in that Jenin refugee camp, where the Israelis have lost perhaps most, certainly, most of their soldiers in this campaign who have been killed and Palestinians have taken some very, very heavy casualties there, is now over.
And with respect to the Israeli military incursions, they have withdrawn. There was an announcement from 24 villages, some big, some small, around the West Bank overnight and have gone into two other villages, one, Ber Zeit near Ramallah. That's the university town of Ber Zeit. And another to Dahariyah, a rather large village, you could also call it a small town, in the southern part of the West Bank.
And I think this reflects perhaps what Prime Minister Sharon was saying yesterday. He means to go on with this operation whether the secretary of state comes, when he comes or not, until they've completed their mission. And the fact that we almost didn't even know that these, that the Israeli troops were in scouring these villages looking for what they say terror suspects over the last several days and the fact that they've withdrawn, that's been a factor of how Mr. Sharon is, in effect, changing the parameters of the Israeli operations in the West Bank. He means to go on doing that as far as he believes is necessary for the curtailing of further terror activities.
And Mr. Powell seemed to be giving recognition to that by saying that maybe, acknowledging the Israelis won't be out by the time he arrives or even during his mission from all the areas where he expects them and the United States has been putting pressure on Israel to get out from those areas and that the actual battle will be more of a diplomatic one between the United States and Israel of the nature of the cease-fire that the United States wants to try to get in place -- Carol.
COSTELLO: And in the meantime, Jerrold, the suicide bombings go on. Can you update us about the one in Hebron?
KESSEL: Yes. There was another incident today. It's not quite clear, although it does seem as if this was a suicide bombing in the making. What happened was there was an explosion in the town of Hebron. That's in the Palestinian control. This is a, the one town, the one big Palestinian town in the West Bank which is actually divided into two sectors. There is still the Israeli controlled part where there are some 500 Jewish settlers there. But in the Palestinian side, totally controlled by the Palestinian Authority, there was an explosion in a car and one person was killed and it seems as if this was a premature explosion before the attempt to carry out that explosion near, right near an Israeli military checkpoint.
And the only person this killed was, it seems, the bomber. But not absolutely clear what happened there. But it could have been another suicide bombing in the making, which was thwarted, in a sense, by the explosion going off before time in respect of where the target was -- Carol.
COSTELLO: All right, Jerrold Kessel reporting live for us from Jerusalem this morning.
Thank you.
And you can get up to the minute information on the Middle East crisis plus profiles of the key players and reporter debriefings on our Web site. It's easy. Go to cnn.com. The AOL keyword is, of course, CNN.
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