With Arafat Siege Lifted, Sharon Faces a New Storm nytimes.com
By JOEL GREENBERG
JERUSALEM, Sept. 30 — Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, away on a three-day visit to Russia, faced withering criticism at home today for his handling of a 10-day siege of Yasir Arafat's compound in the West Bank, which was lifted on Sunday.
The pullback followed persistent criticism of the siege by American officials, which intensified over the weekend.
Today, some of Mr. Sharon's rightist partners in his cabinet as well as newspaper columnists called the decision to lay siege to Mr. Arafat's headquarters a grave miscalculation at a time when the United States was trying to mobilize Arab support for a possible strike on Iraq.
"We didn't correctly assess, when we made the decision two weeks ago, how much the United States has already started counting down to the strike against Iraq," said Housing Minister Natan Sharansky. "The decision was made in haste, and this is the result."
Tourism Minister Yitzhak Levy said that the decision had been based on "erroneous assessments."
Unnamed military officials, in remarks leaked to news organizations, said the siege had boomeranged, increasing Mr. Arafat's popularity among his people even as armored bulldozers razed much of his headquarters compound in Ramallah.
Commentators said Mr. Sharon, who had previously been given leeway for military action by the Bush administration, failed to grasp the American leader's determination not to let the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians disrupt efforts to enlist the broadest possible support for action against Iraq, especially among Arab states.
Mr. Sharon's decision to back down under American pressure was "a colossal failure, the most resounding since he took office," wrote Hemi Shalev in a front-page column of the daily Maariv.
Writing in the newspaper Haaretz, Aluf Ben asserted that in deciding on the action against Mr. Arafat, "the political and defense establishment in Israel completely failed in evaluating the interests and positions of the American administration."
Some analysts speculated that Mr. Sharon's military options against the Palestinians would become more limited as the United States prepares for possible war in Iraq.
Mr. Sharon told reporters traveling with him that the siege, ordered on Sept. 19 after back-to-back suicide bombings in Israel that killed seven people, had actually enhanced Israel's deterrent capability, and that it had been lifted in deference to the United States.
The withdrawal was ordered on Sunday after Mr. Sharon received a stream of telephone calls from officials in the Bush administration, and a stern message from President Bush himself, demanding that the siege be ended.
Mr. Arafat went back to business at his ruined headquarters today, receiving diplomats and demanding that Israel withdraw from Palestinian cities, in keeping with a United Nations Security Council resolution adopted last week. He said that Palestinian elections would proceed as planned in January, and his spokesman said that a new Palestinian cabinet would soon be named to replace the one that resigned this month.
There was fresh violence in the West Bank today, despite a call by Mr. Arafat on Sunday for a mutual cease-fire, an appeal dismissed as hollow by Israeli officials.
In clashes between soldiers and Palestinians defying a three-month-old curfew in Nablus, Israeli troops fatally shot two Palestinian boys and gunmen killed a soldier.
Palestinians said Rami Barbari, 10, was fatally shot in the head by machine-gun fire from a tank near the Balata refugee camp when he was in a group of boys throwing stones. The army said warning shots were fired when a crowd hurled stones and firebombs at the tank.
Another boy, 10-year-old Mahmoud Zagloul, was pronounced clinically dead after being hit by Israeli gunfire during clashes near the Old City in Nablus, medical officials said. The army said soldiers had opened fire on two Palestinians who tried throw an explosive charge and a firebomb at the soldiers.
In a separate incident, Palestinian gunmen shot at Israeli soldiers in a downtown building, killing Sgt. Ari Weiss and seriously wounding another soldier, the army said. The shooting set off a heavy exchange of gunfire in which three shops were burned, Palestinians said.
Amnesty International released a report today that accused the Israeli Army and Palestinian armed groups of "utter disregard for the lives of children and other civilians" in the last two years of violence.
The report said that 250 Palestinian children and 72 Israeli children had been been killed by the end of August and that both Israel and the Palestinians had failed to bring those responsible to justice. |
