Arafat Surveys All That’s Left of His Compound

RAMALLAH, West Bank —  Once the explosions fell silent and the Israeli tanks crunched out of his flattened compound Thursday morning, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat paced the rooms that remained. Pale dust coated his prayer rug and coverlet; the mirror over his dresser was splintered; a crack ran across a framed snapshot of his daughter.

This broken island of rooms--two buildings precariously linked by a cracked walkway--is all that remains of Arafat’s vast, walled headquarters compound here. Armed with tanks, dynamite and bulldozers, Israeli soldiers retaliated for the latest Palestinian suicide bombing by wasting his complex with stunning speed in the small hours of the morning.

Sunrise uncovered a landscape of cement skeletons: beams twisted like paper; building facades shaved clean off.

Two Palestinians died in the assault, medical officials said.

“This aggression against the headquarters of the Palestinian people, what is the meaning of it? They are trying to say they can defeat us,” Arafat told reporters. “No one can defeat the Palestinian people. We are steadfast, steadfast, steadfast.”

For the first time, the Palestinian Authority president’s private quarters were shelled. His bathroom tiles shattered when a shot from an Israeli tank blasted through the wall a few feet from his double bed. He was not in his quarters at the time.

Arafat said the shell was meant to kill him--a claim that Israeli officials denied.

The predawn onslaught came as a furious Israel prepared to bury 13 soldiers and four civilians killed Wednesday by a Palestinian suicide bomber, identified by Islamic Jihad as Hamza Samudi, 17. In a land where politics and warfare are played out with a heavy dash of theater, the ruin at Arafat’s doorstep was a reminder that the Jewish state could strike at any time. It was a show of might, a strict warning--and humiliating evidence of Arafat’s vulnerability.

“We are sending a very clear message that there will be no impunity and no sanctuary,” said Raanan Gissin, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

The tanks and soldiers roared through the streets of Ramallah about 2 a.m., battled their way past Arafat’s guards and unleashed a three-hour barrage of shells and heavy-caliber machine-gun fire. Next, they blew up buildings with dynamite and plowed the rubble to dust with armored bulldozers.

The soldiers rumbled off again after sunrise, leaving a smoking landscape of wreckage. Buildings that dated to the pre-1948 British mandate era were crushed. Mountains of crumbled stone and rivers of white dust were the only remains of the presidential guard office, the military intelligence headquarters and the jail. The Ramallah governor’s office, barracks and a garage were destroyed.

Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said the demolition was a reminder that the Jewish state holds the Palestinian Authority president personally responsible for the continuing suicide bombings.

“We cannot turn a blind eye to these terror attacks,” he said. “The security forces and the [Israeli army] will take every step.”

As the day wore on, the turbulence continued across the region. In the West Bank, a 20-year-old Israeli was shot to death near the Jewish settlement of Ofra. In Israel, mournful music piped from radios and television sets as townspeople in the quiet farmlands northeast of Tel Aviv put on a somber string of nine funerals after Wednesday’s suicide bombing.

Meanwhile, the residents of Ramallah poured into Arafat’s compound to pick their way through the wreckage in dry-eyed disbelief. Few of them had been able to sleep through the roar of bombs and gunfire, and daylight lured them past the shattered gates.

“We just wanted to see,” said Patricia Kanaana, an English-language teacher at a nearby university. When she and her husband walked to the compound from their home in the morning, the tang of gunpowder was still sharp in the air.

Palestinians snapped photographs, rolled video cameras and dug through the mounds of debris for souvenirs--a soldier’s cap, an extension cord, a belt. They bought ice-cream sticks and carob juice from peddlers. They stared at the acrid, smoking heap that used to be the governor’s office and took in the broken walkway where Arafat usually prayed. Children raced their bicycles through the crowd, and the entire scene was blotted monochromatic with the dust from the vast, fallen buildings.

“You hear the explosions, but you don’t expect this much damage,” said jeweler Samer Taha, 29. As the morning wore on, Arafat emerged to greet the people. While the crowd chanted and cheered, he blew kisses, waved a gnarled hand and flashed the victory sign. Television crews in tow, he took a limping pass through his wrecked home, footsteps crunching on broken glass. “Come see how they treat us,” he said.

When he lifted his glance to his bombed prayer walkway, his jaw trembled.

A little more than a month has passed since Israeli forces pulled out of the compound, ending a 34-day siege. Israel appears disinclined to repeat the siege, which cast Arafat as a long-suffering martyr and for a time fueled a surge in his flagging popularity.

During the spring siege, soldiers seized a few outer buildings, hammered through walls and ransacked offices. Israeli troops kept Arafat confined to his offices and carefully avoided striking his private or work quarters.

That damage was cosmetic compared with Thursday’s destruction. Mattresses, sheets and blankets protruded from the smashed layers of a barracks. The ground was strewn with clothing, a shattered satellite dish, loose documents and crushed cars. Entrepreneurial children slung cables over their shoulders and slipped bolts into their pockets.

A young Palestinian soldier clambered high into a smashed bunker. “Come down!” the crowd below shouted. “You’re crazy!” But the soldier ignored them and kept on pawing through mangled office chairs and file cabinets. He was looking for his boots, it seemed, as he picked up and inspected shoe after shoe, only to toss them to the ground and keep sifting.

“I look at this and think, ‘OK, my taxes paid for this, and it’s gone,’ ” said Taha, the jeweler. “We’ll build it again, and they’ll destroy it again. It goes round and round in a circle. It’s not going to end.”

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Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson contributed to this report.