Arafat staring martyrdom in the face

["Nello Margiotta" <animarg at tin.it>]

By Nazir Majally, Arab News Staff


RAMALLAH, West Bank, 31 March - Israeli forces last night said that they
would force their way into Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's office if he
did not hand over a number of his aides. Arafat's defiant response was to
declare that he would fight to the death.

Despite calls from world leaders, including those of Britain and France, for
Israeli "restraint", and a United Nations resolution calling for Israel to
withdraw from Ramallah, the Israeli siege increased in its barbarism and
intensity. Yasser Arafat has never been so isolated, or vulnerable. He is
once again a hero in the Arab world.

Israeli soldiers late yesterday advanced to within a few meters of the rooms
where Arafat is trapped .

Members of the Force 17 body guard, contacted by mobile telephone, said the
Arafat's bodyguards had been asked by to surrender.

"President Arafat has no communication with the outside world, all the phone
lines are cut. The situation is very dangerous," said the senior official,
who asked not be named.

In Tel Aviv, 24 people were injured when a bomber blew himself up in a
crowded cafe last night, police sources said. Six people were in serious
condition, after the Palestinian detonated his explosives inside the My
Coffee Shop cafe on the Allenby Street. Israeli troops, meanwhile, killed
seven Palestinians in cold blood.

Earlier, Arafat, in a candle-lit interview at his ruined West Bank
headquarters, asked the world yesterday to end what he called Israel's
assault on his people. "I appeal to the international community to stop this
aggression against our people, this military escalation, this killing,"
Arafat told Reuters television in English.

"Together we will march until one of our children raises the Palestinian
flag over the churches and mosques of Jerusalem," the Palestinian leader
declared in Arabic, accusing Israel of "terrorist, racist actions using all
kinds of American weapons."

A Palestinian security official, among a handful of close aides inside the
compound, said only a door separated Israeli troops from Arafat's private
office.

Amid heavy firing, Israeli troops took over the entire compound except
Arafat's own offices, where the leader remained holed up with other
officials and security officers.

Earlier in Amman, Palestinian International Cooperation Minister Nabil
Shaath told a press conference he spoke to Arafat on the phone and that the
Palestinian leader's lifeline to the outside world was quickly dwindling.

"I spoke to President Arafat about 15 minutes ago (around 0950 GMT) and he
is in two rooms of what is left of his headquarters in Ramallah, with a few
of his aides and colleagues," Shaath said.

"The Israeli forces have imposed a total siege around President Arafat: the
electricity as you know has been cut off since yesterday and the water too
and there are no food warehouses where he is," he said.

"As a result of the siege he is being cut off from all contacts with the
outside world, including food and electricity," Shaath said.

"I believe that in the absence of any chargers for the few mobile phones
that remain, telephone contacts will be cut off very soon," he added. "But
despite all this President Arafat's morale is very high, in fact his morale
is higher than mine," Shaath told reporters in Amman.

Israel's treatment of Arafat has drawn fierce international condemnation and
severely dented hopes raised by an Arab summit's endorsement this week of a
Middle East peace plan.

UN envoy Terje Roed Larsen told Reuters Israel had denied him permission to
visit Arafat. Palestinians said yesterday that Israeli soldiers had shot
dead five Palestinian policemen "in cold blood" in the West Bank city of
Ramallah.

They said the five policemen had been found yesterday, one day after Israeli
tanks rolled into Ramallah and smashed their way into Arafat's headquarters.
"They were executed in cold blood. This is a clear example of the collective
execution policy adopted by the Israeli government against the Palestinian
people," said Hassan Asfour, a senior Palestinian negotiator. The Israeli
Army said it was checking the report.

Residents said the bodies of the policemen had been discovered in a building
seized by Israeli troops on Friday. They said the Israelis had left the
building, which houses the Cairo-Amman Bank, yesterday. Most of the
policemen, who appeared to be in their late 40s, had been shot in the head,
television footage showed.

Reports said two Palestinians were killed near Tulkarm, in the northern West
Bank, one shot dead by Israeli soldiers and the other when a car he was
inside blew up.

Three Israeli armored vehicles rolled 500 meters into the West Bank town of
Hebron yesterday and opened fire on Palestinian targets, Palestinian
witnesses said.

In Cairo, Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa said yesterday the
boycott of Israel needs to be reactivated in the face of Israeli
 "escalation" in the Palestinian territories.

"The situation calls for taking such decisions," Moussa told a journalist
who asked him about reactivating the Israeli boycott.

"Escalation (of violence) in the occupied territories demonstrates Israel's
refusal of peace," Moussa said after an extraordinary meeting in Cairo of
permanent delegates to the League.

In Jerusalem, Middle East envoys from the United States, the European Union,
the United Nations and Russia met yesterday to discuss the latest upsurge in
violence in the region, a diplomatic source said.

The meeting was held to "touch base and assess the situation", the source
said. He had no details of the outcome, but said no Israeli or Palestinian
representatives were present.

"Russian envoy (Andrei) Vdovin has been instructed to initiate a joint
meeting with Israeli Prime Minister (Ariel) Sharon with the aim of securing
full compliance with the UN Security Council resolution," Ivanov said on
television. Ivanov added the four envoys would also seek to meet Arafat. He
gave no further details.

In Gaza City, Arafat's Fatah movement yesterday called for stepped up
attacks against Israeli soldiers and settlers, the group said in a
statement.

"We call on all national and Islamic groups to hit and intensify their
attacks against the armed occupation forces and their settlers," the
statement said.

Accusing the Israeli government of "playing with fire", Fatah also warned
the Jewish state that "if something happens to Arafat, the balance of the
entire region will be shattered."

Israeli forces seized Sakher Habash, a founder of Arafat's Fatah movement,
after battering his offices in Ramallah yesterday, Palestinian security
officials said.

They said Habash, in his early 60s, had been detained with a score of
others, including several Palestinian policemen, who had been holed up in a
commercial building in Ramallah.

Israeli troops detained scores of Palestinians in house-to-house searches
elsewhere in Ramallah. The army said it had rounded up 145 Palestinians for
questioning.

Israeli armored vehicles rumbled into the Palestinian town of Beit Jala
between Jerusalem and Bethlehem early yesterday in an incursion the army
said was aimed at preventing gunfire from Beit Jala at the nearby Jewish
settlement of Gilo.

In Gaza, about 4,000 people, including many gunmen, marched in the funeral
of an Islamic Jihad activist killed on Friday.

In Lebanon, Israeli warplanes fired missiles near border towns yesterday
after Hezbollah fighters attacked Israeli positions in a disputed frontier
region, witnesses and security officials said.

Hezbollah said it attacked seven Israeli positions in the disputed Shebaa
Farms area near the border between Lebanon, Israel and the Israeli-occupied
Golan Heights, captured from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war.



Nello

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