-Caveat Lector-
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2001350019-2001363406,00.html
10/18/01
Israel says Arafat era is over
FROM CHRISTOPHER WALKER IN JERUSALEM
PLO fears leader is target of assassination plot
Sharon warning of war within a week
THE Middle East moved closer to a new war
yesterday as Ariel Sharon declared the Arafat era
over and moved tanks into three West Bank towns.
Israel also killed a leading Palestinian militant, and the
PLO claimed to have evidence that the Jewish state
was plotting to assassinate its leader, Yassir Arafat.
The rapid collapse of the peace process followed the
murder of Rehavam Zeevi, the Israeli Tourism
Minister, by the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine (PFLP) on Wednesday. Mr Sharon said:
“Arafat has seven days to impose absolute quiet in
the (occupied) territories. If not, we will go to war
against him. As far as I am concerned, the era of
Arafat is over.”
The Palestinians suspect that Israel has decided on its
response to the killing of Mr Zeevi. Nabil Abu
Rdainah, an Arafat aide, said that the Palestinian
Authority had evidence that Israel was planning to
assassinate Mr Arafat.
Israel’s Security Cabinet is understood to have sent a
blunt message to Mr Arafat that unless Israel’s
conditions for the extradition of the killers and the
outlawing of all Palestinian terror organisations were
adhered to within one week he “would be treated in
the way in which the US treats the Taleban”.
Although there was some confusion about the precise
timing of the new Israeli deadline for the surrender of
the PFLP killers — whose identity ministers claimed
to know — officials said that it would run out at the
end of the seven-day mourning period for Mr Zeevi.
In a reflection of the mood across much of Israel as
Mr Zeevi, a former army general, was buried with full
military honours in Jerusalem, his family and other
mourners called for retaliation on a massive scale to
avenge his murder.
The latest Israeli “targeted killing” near the West Bank
town of Bethlehem was that of Ataf Abayat, a
member of the Tanzim militia of Mr Arafat’s Fatah
faction. He died instantly in a car bomb explosion.
He was high on Israel’s wanted list and blamed for
the recent death of a woman settler.
At least three other Palestinians were killed in clashes
across the West Bank, as Israeli tanks entered the
Palestinian towns of Jenin, Nablus and Ramallah. A
10-year-old schoolgirl was killed in Jenin and two
Palestinian security men using automatic rifles to try
to prevent tanks advancing into Ramallah also died.
The Palestinians said that four other schoolgirls and
three adults were wounded in Jenin.
The killing of Mr Abayat, and two other Palestinian
militants who were with him, led to reprisals by
Palestinian gunmen, who fired on the Jerusalem
suburb of Gilo, which Palestinians regard as an illegal
Jewish settlement. A mortar bomb was fired late in
the evening but there were no reports of injuries.
In another incident an Israeli man was shot and killed
and two of his companions were wounded in a
drive-by shooting on the road between Jerusalem and
the West Bank town of Jericho.
Israeli sources refused to comment on the killing of
Mr Abayat, who had recently been picked up by the
Palestinian police and released soon after. He was on
a wanted list Israel had given to Mr Arafat.
The Palestinian Authority said that it had arrested 11
PFLP members, although it was not clear if they
included the suspected assassins. Ziad Abu Zayad, a
Palestinian Cabinet minister, said: “If indeed the
people behind Zeevi’s murder are inside Palestinian
Authority territory, Arafat needs to arrest them and
bring them to trial, but not to extradite them to
Israel.”
Sending tanks into the Palestinian towns, the Israeli
Cabinet said that it reserved the right to enter
Palestinian-ruled territory in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip whenever “there is an operational need to act
against terror”.
Even moderate Israelis appeared ready for a new
cycle of violence. Yossi Sarid, leader of the main
left-wing Meretz party, said that the country was
heading inexorably towards a repeat of the Lebanon
invasion of 1982, which followed the attempted
assassination of its London ambassador, except this
time against the Palestinians in the West Bank and
Gaza Strip.
In advance of the harsher action against Mr Arafat,
Mr Sharon nominated four senior ministers to fly to
the US to convince the Government and people there
that the Palestinian leader was not cracking down on
terrorism.
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