Hisham Abu Taha, Arab News

RAMALLAH, 4 April 2004 — Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat yesterday brushed aside Israeli threat to kill him, as American and other world leaders criticized Israel’s prime minister for suggesting an act that could plunge the region into further chaos.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said in interviews published a day earlier that two of his arch foes, Arafat and Lebanese Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, should not feel beyond the reach of assassination by Israeli forces.

Yesterday, Arafat emerged from his office to speak to reporters in the West Bank headquarters complex where he’s been confined for more than two years by such threats.

“For me, I don’t care,” Arafat said in halting English from the front steps of his office. “I care only for my people, for our students, for our children.”

His aides, however, say they are taking the threats seriously. Last month, Israel killed Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the most senior Palestinian figure targeted by Israel in more than three years of fighting.

Violence continued yesterday, with a Palestinian gunman shooting dead an Israeli man and wounding his 12-year-old daughter in their home in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank.

Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack on the Avnei Hefetz settlement near the Palestinian town of Tulkarm, the Lebanese TV station Al-Manar reported.

Palestinian security forces identified the gunman as Zohair Arda, 18, a Hamas fighter from the Tulkarm refugee camp.

The assailant, armed with a Kalashnikov assault rifle, cut through the settlement’s perimeter fence shortly after midnight and broke into a home, firing shots that lightly wounded the girl. When her father appeared with a pistol, the attacker shot him dead, the army said.

In the southern Gaza Strip, Israeli forces searched for tunnels used to smuggle weapons under the Egyptian border. Troops blew up one tunnel in the border town of Rafah in a massive explosion that leveled a three story house above the underground passageway. The blast left behind a deep crater.

Residents of the area said three Palestinians were lightly wounded during the latest military operation. An army spokesman had no immediate reports of casualties.

Helicopters fired heavy machine guns into an empty field nearby, apparently to provide protective cover for withdrawing Israeli forces.

Also yesterday, the Israeli military arrested 23 Palestinians in a large-scale arrest raid in the West Bank city of Nablus.