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CNN Live At Daybreak

Sharon Visits White House As Violence Continues In Mideast

Aired February 07, 2002 - 05:12   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: Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is in Washington. He'll be meeting today with President Bush. The White House revealed yesterday that Vice President Dick Cheney will travel to Israel and several other key Middle Eastern nations next month. Mr. Sharon is not likely to get what he wants from President Bush, that is, a suspension of relations between Washington and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Israel did launch an air strike on a building in the West Bank city of Nablus late yesterday. The strike was in retaliation for a Palestinian attack that left a mother, her 11-year-old daughter and an Israel soldier dead. The three were killed in the Jewish settlement of Hamra, which is north of Jericho.

And let's get more on the violence in the Middle East and what Mr. Sharon expects out of his Washington visit.

For that we go live to Jerusalem and CNN's Jerrold Kessel -- good morning, Jerrold.

JERROLD KESSEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol.

And there has been, indeed, a veritable slew of violent incidents, mainly in the West Bank, on the eve of this meeting between the Israeli prime minister and President Bush at the White House. The most lethal in that small Jewish settlement in the Jordan Valley district of the West Bank, when a lone Palestinian gunman dressed in Israeli Army uniform and armed with an m16 rifle, automatic rifle, managed to infiltrate into the settlement. He shot dead an Israeli soldier who was on reserve duty there and then went into one of the houses, was let in, it seems, because he was in that army uniform and shot dead the mother and her 11-year-old daughter in that Israeli settlement home. He was then, exchanges of fire and he was shot dead by other Israeli troops.

That incident was followed later in the evening by the Israeli air strike, which included F-16s hitting, using missiles. At least two were fired against a major Palestinian building, one of the central government headquarters in the town of Nablus, which is not far away from that settlement on the West Bank. And in that, after the one missile hit there was a crowd around the area. A second missile hit, sent the Palestinian crowd scurrying in all directions. Eleven people were reported hurt in that Israeli missile strike, none of them seriously. And in the wake of the strike, there are reports of a number of Palestinian prisoners who had been in jail there and in another Palestinian town to the north of Nablus who were released either deliberately by the Palestinian Authority or by a crowd or perhaps in the wake of the air strike, which enabled them to get free. That's not exactly clear. But it does seem that a number of Palestinian prisoners were able to get out who were being held by the Palestinian Authority.

Now, those violent incidents during the night had followed a day of violence, which included the killing of a Palestinian youth in Gaza by Israeli troops and the finding and the thwarting of another would be suicide bomber just outside Jerusalem. He was on a bus headed to a major settlement town. He was intercepted, bundled off the bus by police, who found that he had explosives attached to him.

They stripped him of the explosives. They were detonated safely and the Israelis are calling that something of a miraculous let off. And perhaps potentially the most volatile incident, also on the West Bank, Israeli troops intercepted what they say were a number of so- called Hasam missiles (ph). These are homemade missiles made by the Islamic radical group Hamas that have been fired in Gaza in the past, the first time the Israelis have found them in the West Bank. They say they were headed to a town, a Palestinian town very near the Israeli border. And the significance of this is that Israeli leaders have said very bluntly that if such weapons are used from the West Bank into Israeli towns and population centers, that would not be simply an escalation in the violence, it would send the confrontation into a totally different realm and Israel would react accordingly.

But they did intercept on this occasion those rockets and all this coming, all this latest violence coming on the eve of Mr. Sharon's meeting with President Bush, which the Israelis are saying was deliberately timed by the Palestinians to coincide with the meeting at the White House later today -- Carol.

COSTELLO: So you think the violence is connected to Mr. Sharon's visit to the United States?

KESSEL: Well, that's what the Israelis are saying and perhaps it will give Mr. Sharon gumption to press what we seem to be getting, that he will be asking the United States administration to push down ever further, to press even further for the diplomatic isolation of Yasser Arafat. Whether to go so far, Mr. Sharon, to ask for Mr. Arafat to be, all contact to be severed with him and his administration by the United States, that's a different matter, and whether, of course, he'll get that, as you said, rightly is very unlikely.

But there seems to be something else on Mr. Sharon's mind, not just the volatility of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, because the Israelis have been making much in recent days and especially since the president's State of the Union message in which he labeled Iran and Iraq as part of the axis of terror, the Israelis have been saying that Iran is very much the destabilizing factor in the region. And the Israelis want to see how far their view of the strategic concerns and strategic threats in the region coincide with that of the United States, as the United States perhaps prepares to expand its global war on terror -- Carol.

COSTELLO: OK, we'll see what happens.

Jerrold Kessel reporting live for us from Jerusalem, thank you.

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