YASSIR ARAFAT, the Palestinian leader, backed down yesterday from a confrontation with militants hunted by Israel after trying to expel them from his headquarters in Ramallah.
He agreed to a deal allowing 17 members of al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades to remain in his compound pending further talks between Israel and the Palestinians on what should be done with them.
The climbdown came after he tried to banish the men to Jericho in an effort to persuade Israel to lift the siege that it has imposed on him for the past 18 months. The militants have been sheltering in the Muqataa, Mr Arafat’s bomb-damaged compound, for months in the face of Israeli insistence that they are wanted on terrorism charges.
Mr Arafat had the militants summoned to his office and told them that they were being sent to Jericho, a West Bank town that Israel has offered to hand over to Palestinian control as part of a deal brokered with the United States. Israel has indicated that it will lift the siege on Mr Arafat if he expels the wanted men.
However, in a revealing sign of his diminished status, Mr Arafat agreed to let them stay for the time being, after a threat from other al-Aqsa Brigades cells to “strike with an iron fist” against Israel.
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Earlier he had ordered the arrest of the men at gunpoint after only five of them agreed to go to Jericho, while the others threatened to go on hunger strike.
Kamal Ghanem, one of the leaders of the detained men, who is accused by the Israelis of trying to send two female suicide bombers into Israel, said yesterday that they were to be allowed to remain in exchange for agreeing to refrain from violence and to have contact only with their families. They would remain until talks between the Israelis and Palestinians were completed, he said.
Shaul Mofaz, the Israeli Defence Minister, has promised that Israel will not arrest such men if they are kept in a Palestinian prison in Jericho, where they would be under international supervision. Nevertheless, Palestinian sources say that the militants are reluctant to go for fear that Israel may try to assassinate them.
Israel has offered to withdraw troops from Jericho and one other West Bank city and to transfer control to Palestinian security forces in confidence-building steps intended to boost the United States-backed “road map” to peace. But it has refused to yield to Palestinian demands to withdraw from Ramallah, partly because Mr Arafat is sheltering wanted militants there.
The stand-off exposed unhappiness within Fatah — the political grouping to which Mr Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Prime Minister, belong and to which al-Aqsa Brigades is linked — over the three-month ceasefire that militant groups have declared as their contribution to the road map.
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Many al-Aqsa Brigades members complain that the truce was imposed without consultation and have threatened to break ranks.
As Mr Arafat reached a compromise with the militant factions, however, Silvan Shalom, the Israeli Foreign Minister, rejected an offer last night from Nabil Shaath, his Palestinian counterpart, to make the three-month ceasefire “absolute and permanent”.
After a meeting in Jerusalem, between the two men, Mr Shalom insisted that the Palestinian Government must confront and dismantle militant groups, something that Mr Abbas has said that he will not do for fear of provoking a civil war. Israel argues that the militant groups are simply using the present truce to rebuild their strength.
Sources present at the meeting said that Mr Shalom had called for “100 per cent effort” to dismantle Palestinian “terror networks”. Mr Shaath replied that he did not have “200 tanks to fight Hamas”, the Islamist extremist group, but added that the present truce could extend “for three years or even 27 years” if Palestinians experienced improvements in their daily lives.
Four Israelis, including a woman, her nine-year-old daughter and another child, were injured last night in a shooting attack on two cars near Har Gilo, a Jewish settlement south of Jerusalem.
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Raanan Gissin, a spokesman for Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, said that the incident proved the need for an onslaught by the Palestinians against militant groups.
In further violence, a Palestinian man was shot dead by Israeli soldiers at a road block near Ramallah. The Army said that the man did not obey instructions to stop his car.
Airliner ban
Israel is to ban foreign airliners without bulletproof cockpit doors from flying over the country or landing at its airports.
The Israeli Transport Ministry said that some airlines with older fleets, particularly those from Eastern Europe, had yet to install the safety doors. The International Civil Aviation Organisation wants every airline to install reinforced cockpit doors by November.