The Hindu : Sharon may press for exiling Yasser Arafat

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jun 11, 2002

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International

Sharon may press for exiling Yasser Arafat

By Kesava Menon

Manama (Bahrain) June 10. The cabinet reshuffle and reforms announced by the Palestinian Authority (PA) yesterday has not had any effect so far on Israel's policy of entering West Bank towns with impunity allegedly to root out suspected terrorists.

Israeli troops today raided Ramallah forcing a cancellation of the new-look Palestinian Authority cabinet's first meeting. But Israel has said that it will be interested in finding out if the reforms, especially of the Authority's security force structure, will lead to more effective action against militants.

The raid into Ramallah included an incursion into the headquarters compound of the PA chief, Yasser Arafat. While some buildings in the area were destroyed, the Israeli shelling did not threaten Mr. Arafat who, his supporters said, was safe. In this respect, today's incursion was different from the one five days ago in which shots were reportedly fired at Mr. Arafat's bedroom. The repeated raids that deliberately miss the Palestinian leader do, however, serve a purpose for Israel. It softens international opinion to the idea that Mr. Arafat's position, though not his life, is sacrosanct. In thus raising the threshold of tolerance for its actions, Israel prepares the international community for a course of action aimed directly at Mr. Arafat.

The Israeli media reported today that their Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, who is currently in Washington, is determined to swing the U.S. administration behind his objective of deporting Mr. Arafat. Whether a U.S. administration that is divided on the approach towards Mr. Arafat will yield to Mr. Sharon's wishes might well depend on its assessment of the value of reform the Authority has taken. Israel's army radio and Ha'aretz have reported that the Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak, has also promised Washington that he will pressure Mr. Arafat to carry out meaningful reforms.

The need to give Mr. Arafat an opportunity, and the huge risks involved in any attempt to capture him by the Israelis, would probably prevent the U.S. from supporting Mr. Sharon's plans for deportation. On first reading, it does not appear that the U.S. administration will immediately and strongly approve the reforms that the Authority undertook yesterday. The highlight of the reform was that Mr. Arafat has shed the Interior Ministry portfolio, handing it to Gen. Abdel Razzaq al Yahya, who is mandated to bring all Palestinian security forces under his command. These forces, which numbered nearly a dozen till the announcement, are to be streamlined and regrouped into three divisions. All divisions will be under the control of the Interior Minister.

Although the U.S. and Israel have pressed for a re-structuring of the security forces several problems are envisaged. Gen. Yahya was involved in security negotiations with Israel and apparently was not involved in any controversy with the Zionist state them unlike some of the heads of other Palestinian security forces. But if he has been relatively soft towards Israelis (and there is no confirmation of this), it can be a handicap to his acceptance by the Palestinian public as well as the security satraps who have run the various forces till now.

Gen. Yahya's task of consolidating the security forces will only be complicated by Mr. Arafat's well-known style of playing off one subordinate against another.

Initial reports also suggest that Gen. Yahya is more pliable than some of the other security chiefs like Mohammed Dahlan and Jibril Rajoub. If this is true then Gen. Yasser Arafat (as he likes to refer to himself these days) will be effectively running the Authority's security forces and that would not please the U.S., Israel or even the Palestinian public. The Palestinian Authority has also reduced its ministries from 31 to 21 by abolishing some departments and merging others. Some Ministers have been dropped and others given new portfolios. None of these changes has been welcomed by the Palestinian public either.

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