Israel ponders expulsion option

2003-09-07 19:05

Jerusalem - Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat found himself centre stage once more on Sunday after the resignation of his prime minister Mahmud Abbas even as Israel talked of plans to expel him from the West Bank.

Senior Palestinian figures were trooping to what remained of his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah where he has been confined for the past 20 months by the Israeli army.

Top of the agenda was finding a successor to Abbas, who has so far been unable to prise power away from the man who has been synonymous with the Palestinian nationalist cause for nearly half a century.

Israel and the United States have been hoping to render Arafat redundant by bypassing him in negotiations in the Middle East peace process, choosing the more moderate Abbas as their interlocutor.

Their trust and patience evaporated after the breakdown of the tortuous peace process in the 1990s and the outbreak of the second intifada nearly three years ago.

A statement by the government in the aftermath of Abbas' resignation insisted: "Israel will not accept a situation in which the control of the Palestinian Authority would fall back into Yasser Arafat's hands or one of his partisans'."

But Abbas' plight has served to underline that any future appointment has to be able to work with the 74-year-old symbol of Palestinian resistance.

The situation has led to an increasing chorus of calls by Israeli ministers for Arafat to be expelled, seeing his banishment as the only way to neuter him.

Defence Minsiter Shaul Mofaz said last week that the failure to expel Arafat two years ago at the height of the intifada was a historical mistake.

Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom entered the fray on Sunday, telling public radio that Arafat must be banished.

"The expulsion of Arafat is, as I have already said, the inevitable result of what he has done to provoke the fall of Mahmud Abbas," Shalom said.

Abbas' resignation was proof of Arafat's refusal "to allow any political process to develop," he added.

But Shalom's Palestinian counterpart Nabil Shaath warned that any such move would be a disaster, arguing that Arafat's confinement to his headquarters had also been a major error.

Israel would be reluctant to expel Arafat without at least tacit support from the United States.

But Ze'ev Schiff, an analyst with the leading Israeli daily Haaretz, said that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's chief of staff Dov Weisglass "received a distinct negative response" from US National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice on a recent visit to Washington when he broached the subject.

"This means that Arafat is to be kept at a distance, but that there should be no attempt to either expel him or harm him physically," said Schiff.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell warned against any immediate expulsion.

"I would not support it at this time," he said, adding that exile would only serve "to put him on the world stage as opposed to the stage he is currently occupying".

Any attempt to expel Arafat, quite apart from bolstering his image as a victim of the Israelis, is likely to meet major diplomatic opposition.

- AFP