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CNN Live Today

Israel Launches New Strikes In West Bank, Gaza

Aired June 24, 2002 - 14:20   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.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Israel is launching a new military operation, sending tanks, troops and helicopters into the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

CNN's Jerrold Kessel reports on the significance of Israel's expanded anti-terror effort.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JERROLD KESSEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A new defining moment in this conflict: the deepening Israeli military hold on Palestinian towns, response to the latest wave of the devastating Palestinian suicide campaign that's targeted Israelis.

The latest phase of the Israeli drive -- back into Ramallah again, surrounding Yasser Arafat's Mukata headquarters, recalling another time when Israeli forces took control of Palestinian areas. This very month, 35 years ago, in June 1967, during the Arab-Israel war, when Israel first occupied the West Bank, then, too, saying it was to protect itself against Arab attacks.

An occupation which persisted until the mid-1990's, and partially ended with the implementation of the Oslo interim peace accords.

YASSER ARAFAT, PALESTINIAN LEADER: This means that they are insisting to cancel what had been agreed upon from Oslo until now.

KESSEL: Israel says this latest operation, which is given the code name Determined Path, is not just a remake of its previous attempt to undercut the Palestinian suicide bombers at the source, its major military offensive into West Bank towns in April going on into May. The main difference, Israel says, this time it's open-ended, though Foreign Minister Shimon Peres insists open-ended should not mean permanent.

SHIMON PERES, ISRAELI FOREIGN MINISTER: I hope it won't be more than a few months.

KESSEL (on camera): A few months?

PERES: Yes.

KESSEL (voice-over): In that time, Israel says it wants this to be a defining moment, the crushing of Palestinian terror. But is this also a defining political moment, a missed political moment.

Even as his Palestinian Authority becomes more and more beleaguered, Yasser Arafat, now not the only ruler in town, tells an Israeli newspaper that he now accepts the Clinton proposal for an end of the conflict, peace.

These terms were outlined by the former United States president back in December 2000. And, on the Israeli side, one of the Palestinian leader's Oslo peace partners, Shimon Peres, while acknowledging that Oslo is in effect no longer the defining marker in Palestinian-Israeli relations, also says there must be a political way out.

PERES: There is a need for a political horizon, not just military means.

KESSEL: But all talk of a negotiating option are for now sidelined by this new phase of the confrontation.

(on camera): This is the Israeli military checkpoint on the outskirts of Bethlehem. In the past, although the Palestinian town was under tight Israeli control from here regularly, it was a bustling crossing point, albeit a point of friction.

(voice-over): The previous major Israeli offensive to beat the bombers gave birth to a string of planned United States initiatives: an international peace conference, demand for reform of the Palestinian Authority, and now the much-anticipated but much=postponed laying out of the Bush vision of the road to resolving this conflict.

Know this checkpoint is a launching pad for the Israeli operation inside Bethlehem, indicative of how the point of friction has moved into Bethlehem, into the Palestinian cities.

(on camera): In a way that leaves the would-be United States initiative needing to accommodate to this new reality here on the ground -- the ongoing Palestinian bombing campaign against Israel and Israel's forceful response to it.

Jerrold Kessel, CNN, on the border between the West Bank and Israel.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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