I like to get it from the "Horse's Mouth."
Israeli leaders defend Arafat removal decision
The Jerusalem Post Staff Sep. 13, 2003
Israeli leaders defended their decision to "remove" Yasser Arafat despite international condemnation, saying he is an obstacle to peace and should have been cast aside years ago.
Statements of concern rolled in from country after country after Israel made the vaguely worded announcement that it would act to remove Arafat. The threat set off pro-Arafat marches in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and drew opposition from the European Union, the United Nations and Arab countries.
Education Minister Limor Livnat said that despite the U.S. objections, Arafat - whom she compared to Saddam Hussein, Sheik Ahmed Yassin and Osama bin Laden - was no longer immune. "Israel is an independent and sovereign state and though it has a close and friendly important relationship with America, it doesn't take orders from America," Livnat said Friday.
A defiant Arafat emerged from his compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah for a second straight night Friday and rallied hundreds of supporters, saying: "To Jerusalem we are going as martyrs in the millions."
The crowd held photos of Arafat and chanted: "With our blood and souls we will redeem you." Arafat answered: "With our blood and souls, we will redeem you, Palestine."
As the crowd left the compound, a dozen Palestinians remained behind, saying they would stay in tents there and act as human shields if Israeli troops try to seize their leader.
The Israeli threats only seemed to bolster Arafat, who has been trapped in his office for nearly two years by troops and threats that he might not be allowed back.
The UN Security Council's 15 member-nations warned Israel Saturday morning against carrying out its decision to 'remove' Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat.
"Council members expressed the view that the removal of Mr Arafat would be unhelpful and should not be implemented," said a statement by Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry of Britain, the council president for September.
The statement was approved during a closed-door emergency session convened at the request of Arab states and the 116 members of the Non-Aligned Movement at the UN.
"It would be unwise to expel him," U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan told reporters in Geneva.
Israel has rejected the Security Council warning against the expulsion of Yasser Arafat. Diplomatic sources said that, "with all due respect to the institution of the UN, Israel will not give up its right to self defense." The official added that Arafat was a "master terrorist," according to Ynet. Another official in Jerusalem said that the international community showed "hypocrisy" in its stance favoring Arafat, while in the meantime "Israeli women and children continue to die in terrorist acts."
The UN will reconvene on Monday to hear a report from the UN envoy for the Middle East, Terje Roed-Larsen, followed by a debate open to all UN members.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell telephoned both the Israeli and Palestinian foreign ministers to emphasize the United States' opposition to exiling Arafat.
Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said many calls of concern came in from governments across the world.
"They're asking us to do nothing against Yasser Arafat," he said. "Has the world turned on its head?"
Israel's government says as long as the 74-year-old Palestinian leader continues to wield authority, peacemaking efforts will fail. It maintains Arafat is at least indirectly to blame for attacks on Israeli civilians and accused him of doing nothing with security forces under his control to crack down on Islamic militant groups.
Still, Israeli troops made no move to oust him from Ramallah, and on Friday abandoned lookout positions on top floors of two buildings overlooking his compound.
"Recent days' events have proven again that Yasser Arafat is a complete obstacle to any process of reconciliation ... " the Cabinet's communique stated Thursday. "Israel will act to remove this obstacle in the manner, at the time, and in the ways that will be decided on separately ..."
US Ambassador Dan Kurtzer met with Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz friday at Mofaz's headquarters in Tel-Aviv and delivered the Bush administration's concern over the decision to expel Arafat.
The United States has notified Israel it is opposed to the expulsion of Yasser Arafat even though "he is part of the problem and not part of the solution" in the tense standoff with the Palestinians.
"We think that it would not be helpful to expel him because it would just give him another stage to play on," spokesman Richard Boucher said as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government threatened to oust Arafat from the West Bank.
"The Israeli government is very clear on what our views are on these things and I think understands clearly our position," Boucher said.
Mofaz said that Israel's biggest mistake was not removing Arafat in the past. He declined to comment on reports claiming he called for Arafat's death during Thursday night's cabinet meeting.
A poll conducted Thursday evening shows sixty percent of Israelis would like to see Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat killed or expelled.
The telephone survey was conducted, as Israel's security Cabinet discussed Arafat's fate. In the survey by the Dahaf Institute, 503 respondents were asked what should be done with Arafat. Thirty-seven percent favoured assassination, 23 percent said Israel should expel him and 21 percent said he should continue to be isolated at his West Bank headquarters.
Fifteen percent said Israel should release him from isolation and resume negotiations with the leader who is shunned by the United States and Israel as an obstacle to peace.
The Dahaf survey, published Friday in the Yediot Ahronot daily, had an error margin of 4.4 percentage points.
Deputy chief of General Staff Maj.-Gen. Gaby Ashkenazi said the army had "several plans ready and waiting to go" with regard to Arafat. "One of them is labeled 'Arrest of Arafat and his removal from the Mukataah' ," said Ashkenazi.
The Cabinet also approved the release of funds for a call-up of reserves, which will take several weeks, indicating that Israel may be preparing for a major military operation.
Recently-appointed Palestinian national security adviser Jibril Rajoub, an Arafat loyalist, said expelling the leader will only threaten stability. "This foolish action will bring tragedy upon the Israelis. I warn against such a foolish action."
The Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, the military wing of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, threatened it would wage an "all out war" against Israel if Arafat were to be harmed in any way. In a statement released Friday, the group said Israel would be "flooded" with suicide bombers if action was taken against Arafat. "We will prove that we know how to defend our leader and symbol of our resistnace," the group said.
In Ramallah, Arafat stormed out of a meeting of the Fatah central council on Thursday after a bitter confrontation with Gen. Nasser Youssef, the Interior Minister nominee in the new cabinet led by Ahmed Qurei.
According to well-informed sources, an enraged Arafat left the meeting after Youssef described him as "the most incompetent revolutionary leader in history."
The sources said Arafat hurled insults at Youssef as he walked out of the room.
"It was a very tense meeting," a member of the Fatah central council told The Jerusalem Post. "The situation is general is tense because of the Israeli threats to expel President Arafat." He denied a report according to which Arafat spat at Youssef on his way out.
Defying the Israeli decision, Arafat appeared at the entrance to his sandbagged Ramallah office, carried aloft by bodyguards, smiling broadly and flashing "V for victory" signs at thousands of backers who rushed to his West Bank headquarters to protect him from what they feared would be an immediate Israeli move to seize him. "The
leader is Abu Ammar," the crowd chanted, referring to Arafat by his nom de guerre.
Using a bullhorn, Arafat recited a passage from the Quran, the Muslim holy book, about being steadfast in the face of an oppressor. He also said: "We are on sacred land, and we will protect our holy Christian and Muslim places. We send a message to the detainees, and to the prisoners, together all the way to Jerusalem."
He then led the crowd in a chant, waving his finger in rhythm: "To Jerusalem, to Jerusalem, to Jerusalem." Both Israelis and Palestinians claim the city as their capital.
After the meeting, a visibly shaken Arafat vowed to reporters that he would stay put and never leave the Palestinian territories out of his own free will. "This is my homeland. This is Terra Sancta. No one can kick me out," he said. "They can kill me. They have bombs," he said, adding that he would definitely not leave out of his own free will.
Arafat's spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudeinah, said that an Israeli attempt to expel Arafat would deal a major blow to the peace process.
"It will result in big damage to the peace process and international efforts," Abu Rudeinah warned. "We are asking the international community, especially the United States, to stop these Israeli threats against the Palestinian people and the Palestinian leadership." He said IDF snipers were now surrounding Arafat's office.
Ahmed Abdel Rahman, a political advisor to Arafat, also warned that any attempt to harm Arafat could have catastrophic consequences.
"An attempt to harm President Arafat would lead the region to the edge of the abyss," he told the Voice of Palestine radio.
Former US Ambassador Martin Indyk also proposed Thursday that Israel expel Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat but only if Israel couples it with a political overture to the Palestinians that includes abandoning some Jewish settlements on the West Bank.
"It's time Arafat moves on," Indyk said at the Brookings Institution, where he heads a Middle East policy center. "But it is clear he is not going to go quietly."
Nor, Indyk said, was the Israeli government prepared to expel Arafat, who is confined to his battered West Bank headquarters and shunned by the Bush administration as entangled in terror and corruption.
His expulsion should not be put forward as an Israeli response to terror but as part of a larger Israeli plan to break the stalemate in peacemaking with the Palestinians, Indyk said.
Israel, for instance, should offer to withdraw from Jewish settlements and thereby assure the Palestinians the territory they would control is contiguous, Indyk said.
Speaking at the same Brookings luncheon, former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres faulted the Israeli government as not having "kept its promise" on halting settlement activity.
Now temporary head of the opposition Labor party, Peres said Israel should not act "out of anger," even if it was justified. "While we have to fight terror we must be careful not to escalate the situation," he said.
Peres urged the government to deal with the new Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Queria. "He understands terror and peace do not work together, and he prefers peace," the 80-year-old elder statesman said.
At the same time, Peres, who shared a Nobel Peace Prize with Arafat for peacemaking a decade ago, said he was against expulsion even though Arafat was "a problem."
"Occasionally you have to live with problems without solving them," Peres said.
He warned that expelling Arafat would be a "historic mistake" that would "deepen the hostilities between the Palestinians and ourselves" and told CNN, "Arafat outside will be more effective and more negative than he is today."
In Ramallah, IDF troops took control of the Palestinian Authority Cultural Ministry on Thursday morning, Palestinian sources said. The building is located just south of Yasser Arafat's Muqata compound.
As well as Arafat, the cabinet communique also referred to the government's recent statements that every Hamas member is marked for death. "The prime minister ordered the army to act ceaselessly ... to destroy the terrorist organizations, and take all necessary steps against the leaders, commanders and those who carry out the attacks." Israel will continue this "until it is convinced ... that the Palestinian Authority is taking real action toward the dismantling and destruction of the terrorist organizations..."
And Israel also stated its opposition to any future cease-fires. "The government of Israel rejects any idea of a cease-fire as the way to handle terrorism. Terrorism will cease only after the dismantlement and destruction of the terrorist organizations. This is the duty of the Palestinian Authority [which] will be judged only by its actions and not its declarations...."
The communique also refers briefly to the security fence. "The Cabinet also decided that the construction of the security fence [between Israel and the West Bank] will be accelerated," it stated.
With The Associated Press
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