Israelis Clamp Down on Nablus, Hunting Suspects
Penning the old city of Nablus with scores of tanks, bulldozers and armored vehicles, Israel sent soldiers house to house today in pursuit of explosives laboratories and suspected militants, acting against what it called a possible source of the bomb that killed seven people, including five Americans, at Hebrew University on Wednesday.

Elsewhere, Israel stepped up its punishment of the relatives of suicide attackers, destroying the homes of at least two families and preparing to banish the brothers of two assailants to the Gaza Strip.

Five Palestinians were killed in fighting today, two of them in Nablus's casbah. But Israeli officials and Palestinian witnesses said there was little resistance here as the overwhelming force swept in before dawn.

Today, the army took at least 50 Palestinian men, handcuffed with plastic straps, to an empty store on the casbah's edge, forcing them to kneel or squat there. Eventually, the soldiers blindfolded the men and loaded them onto Israeli tourism buses to be taken for questioning.

The army said it had found two explosives laboratories stocked with acids and fertilizer for making bombs as well as ammunition and weapons, including one crude rocket. It said soldiers had blown up the apartment buildings containing the labs.

The speed with which weapons laboratories were reconstituted after the April invasion suggests the difficulty facing the army in sustaining what it regards as the benefits of these raids.

Palestinian residents of the casbah said Israeli forces had demolished several homes as well, an accusation the army denied. Explosions were occasionally heard in Nablus today as squads of soldiers in battle gear moved through the otherwise silent, empty streets.

In the Gaza Strip today, Israeli soldiers shot and killed an elderly woman. The army, which said it was investigating the incident, said soldiers firing at a suspicious figure near an Israeli settlement had accidentally shot the woman in the leg. Officials said the woman had been treated at the scene and then taken to an Israeli hospital, where she died.

The woman's family said she was shot dead as she slept at home.

This week, the top security advisers to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon approved new tactics intended to deter suicide bombers, and the army appeared today to be stepping up its efforts to put them into practice.

In Tulkarm, Israeli soldiers blew up the home of a bomber from Hamas who killed three Israelis in an attack on the seaside city of Netanya in March. In Hebron, soldiers demolished the home of a gunman from Islamic Jihad who killed two teenagers in Jerusalem in November.

Although Israel has used such demolitions in the past, including during the first intifada, it has not relied on them recently as a deterrent. Military officials said many more such demolitions were likely.

The commander of Israeli forces in the West Bank region, Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Eitan, signed orders to banish to the Gaza Strip two men who are brothers of two Palestinian militants accused of killing Israelis. One of the accused is said to be behind two attacks on an Israeli settlement, and the other is said to have engineered the explosives for a double suicide bombing this month in Tel Aviv.

Although the Israeli government recently arrested 19 relatives of suicide bombers, the attorney general, Elyakim Rubinstein, found that only those actually implicated in the attacks could be legally punished. Still, the Israeli Army is anticipating that the two Palestinian men will challenge their banishment in the Israeli Supreme Court early next week.

In New York, Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, expressed concern through a spokesman over the planned expulsions to Gaza.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/03/international/middleeast/03MIDE.html