Arafat warns of threat to regional stability

By Mark Lavie

Associated Press

JERUSALEM – Israeli tanks and troops returned to two West Bank villages Wednesday in a hunt for Palestinian suspects, and an angry Yasser Arafat warned that his confinement by Israel was damaging Middle East stability.

Israeli military operations showed few signs of easing, and the Palestinian leader complained to Secretary of State Colin Powell that rather than withdraw as Washington had demanded, Israel was reoccupying towns it had previously left.

“This means that they are continuing their aggression against the Palestinian people,” Arafat told reporters in a darkened hallway of his headquarters after Powell had left.

He appealed for international pressure on Israel to end his own imprisonment in his Ramallah office. “Is this acceptable that I cannot go out the door?” said Arafat, who did not escort Powell to his car at the end of their meeting.

“Do you think this will not reflect in the whole stability and peace in the Middle East?” he said, suggesting an easing of tension was unlikely as long as he is confined.

Ending his weeklong mission, Powell said that although the Israeli pullback “wasn’t as quickly as we would have liked, it is under way.”

Powell’s remarks were less demanding than those by President Bush last week insisting on an immediate end to the military operation. With the Israelis still operating in the area, Powell told a Jerusalem news conference that “cease-fire is not a relevant term at the moment.”

He welcomed a promise by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to wind up the West Bank sweep “in the next few days or a week or so.” He said Sharon had given him a timeline for the withdrawal, and that Israeli reservists were already being demobilized.

“It is clear that the Americans have legitimized the aggressive style of the Israeli government,” said Mohammed Dahlan, a Palestinian security chief in Gaza.

Dahlan said the meeting with Powell was fruitless. The Americans “could not even force Israel to move their tanks from in front of Arafat’s office.”

In the northern West Bank, the army conducted searches and arrested suspects in the villages of Silat a-Hartia, northwest of Jenin, and Balaa, east of Tulkarem, a spokesman said.

The army had been in both villages several times during the West Bank operation that began March 29 to seek out and arrest Palestinians it holds responsible for violence against Israel.

Overnight, Israeli forces sealed off the Palestinian neighborhood of Issawiyah in Jerusalem, removing residents and searching their homes for militant suspects. Police spokesman Gil Kleiman said two men were detained before the operation ended early Wednesday.

Residents said the military brought bulldozers into the village. Men were taken to a gas station and women and children to a school. Police imposed a nearly 18-hour curfew – rarely done inside Jerusalem’s city limits – during which families were barred from returning to their homes. Many slept in their cars.

In Nablus, military authorities released some of the Palestinians detained in their sweep after questioning, including Associated Press reporter Mohammed Daraghmeh.

After Daragmeh’s release late Tuesday night, soldiers told him he had to walk home, 6 miles away, even though the city is under a strict curfew. Gunfire broke out near him at one point, and later, soldiers posted in the city ordered him to strip to his underwear to check for weapons.

During their meeting, Powell asked Arafat to comply with Israel’s request to hand over wanted suspects holed up with him in his Ramallah headquarters and to facilitate the surrender of gunmen who took refuge in Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity, Palestinian officials said.

But Arafat was outraged at the continued Israeli siege of the holy site, as well as of his own compound.

He called Israel’s encirclement of the church “shameful,” asking: “Who can accept this against these very holy sacred places?”

Following Powell’s mission, efforts appeared to be aimed at starting an international peace conference, probably in June, while senior U.S. officials continued working in the region.

Sharon has eased objections to Arafat’s participation, saying it was not up to him to decide who would represent the other parties.

But the Palestinians were skeptical.

“The next steps are clear. We have all the right to defend ourselves. And now the Arab countries have to understand that they carry no weight with the Americans, who consider Sharon as the only leader in the region,” said Dahlan, the security chief.

On Tuesday, Israeli forces entered three Palestinian villages near Jerusalem – Abu Dis, Izzariyeh and Sawahra As-Sharkiyeh – declared a curfew and searched for suspects, acting on intelligence of a planned attack.

Since the fighting began 18 months ago, 1,508 Palestinians and 468 Israelis have been confirmed killed, but the Palestinian death toll from fighting this week, mainly in the Jenin refugee camp, was still unclear.

At the Jenin refugee camp, scene of the heaviest fighting between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian gunmen and bombers, Red Cross teams joined the Israeli military in searching for bodies. Israel said it allowed humanitarian groups to bring food and medicine into the camp and were working to restore water and electricity.

In Gaza, the militant Hamas group issued an appeal to Muslims around the world to donate money, listing the prices of bullets, rifles and explosives. A posting on the Hamas Internet Web site said the group is manufacturing rockets and other weapons and said that Hamas was responsible for 65 percent of Israeli deaths during 18 months of fighting.