ARABS-ISRAEL - Dec. 3 - Israel Hits PA Targets & Calls The PA A 'Terror-Supporting Entity'.

Israeli helicopter gunships destroy Arafat's three helicopters, stationed near his home in the Gaza Strip. In Jenin, Israeli warplanes bomb Arafat's headquarters and a police building. Israeli officials say the air strikes are meant as a first, largely symbolic punishment for the three weekend suicide bombings in Jerusalem and Haifa. No serious Palestinian casualties in the Israeli attacks were reported. PM Sharon accused Arafat of provoking war by pursuing "the path of terrorism". At an emergency cabinet meeting later in the day, Sharon said he held Arafat directly responsible for a wave of terrorism. The Israeli government declared the PA a "terror-supporting entity" and designated the armed wing of Arafat's Fatah organisation and his elite Force 17 security units as "terrorist groups". PA chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said with his speech Sharon declared war on the Palestinians - "full-out, full-scale war". He added: "This is the death road that he took tonight". He appealed to Pres. Bush to step in and restrain the Israelis. He said: "We don't want to push, not just Palestinians and Israelis, but the whole region down to a cycle of bloodshed." The Israeli action overshadowed what appeared to be Arafat's biggest crackdown in five years against extremists, a sweep in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that began late at night on Dec. 3 and, PA officials said, has resulted so far in the arrests of 110 Palestinians. But most Israeli officials dismissed the arrests as an exaggerated, short-term attempt by Arafat to salvage his international standing. A senior Israeli military official said Arafat acted against none of the men Israel most wanted to see arrested. But Hamas leaders accused Arafat of acting against the proper course of the Palestinian uprising, with Mohammad Ghazel, senior Hamas official in Nablus, saying: "This is unfortunately contrary to all meanings of democracy that the United States and other countries raise as a banner". In Nablus, hundreds of Palestinians demonstrated against the arrests. In the Gaza Strip, about 3,000 people marched in a funeral procession for one of the gunmen who killed an Israeli doctor driving near settlements in the Gaza Strip on Dec. 2. One of the mourners, Mahmoud Ajoor, 41, said he opposed any arrests of Hamas and Islamic Jihad members, because "this jihad is to resist the occupation. If Arafat continues to do this, there will be no unity among all the political factions". One woman, Om Ibrahim, said suicide bombings and other attacks on civilians were "an answer to what Sharon did to us. He kills our children, women, men. He bulldozes our lands. Why doesn't the world condemn it when Palestinian people get killed?"