Just like dealing with a bad child, punishment works.
From Haaritz today.
Palestinian security forces arrested three suspects in the assassination of a cabinet minister Rehavam Ze'evi on Thursday morning. The arrests meet a key Israeli condition for lifting a travel ban on Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat.
The arrests were announced by the Palestinian intelligence chief in the West Bank city of Nablus, Colonel Talal Dweikat, who said the arrest order came directly from Arafat.
Israel has said Arafat could only leave the West Bank town of Ramallah once Ze'evi's assassins have been arrested. Arafat has been confined to Ramallah since December.
Ra'anan Gissin, an adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said that if the Palestinians provided evidence that the suspects had been arrested, the travel ban on Arafat would be lifted.
Ze'evi was shot and killed in the hallway of the Hyatt Hotel in Jerusalem on October 17 of last year. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine carried out the assassination, saying it was avenging the killing of its leader, Mustafa Zibri, also known as Abu Ali Mustafa, in a targeted Israeli missile attack on his office.
Under Israeli pressure, Arafat arrested the leader of the PFLP, Ahmed Saadat, last month, but three other suspects remained at large.
At about 2 A.M. Thursday, Palestinian security forces stormed the suspects' hideout of the three in Nablus, said Dweikat.
Dweikat identified the three men in detention as Ahed Abu Gholmi, Basel Asmar and Hamdi Koran. Abu Gholmi is the West Bank leader of the PFLP's military wing, the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, and is suspected of having planned Ze'evi's killing. Asmar and Koran are suspected of having carried out the killing. |
