Arafat talks to Arab TV as Israelis close in

March 30, 2002


MIDDLE EAST CRISIS: The Israeli military onslaught is seen as the beginning of Ariel Sharon's push to reoccupy the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip, writes David Horowitz

One machine-gun on the desk in front of him, thick glasses perched on the end of his nose, the Palestinian Authority president Mr Yasser Arafat gave interview after telephone interview to Arab television stations yesterday, as Israeli tanks and troops fought their way ever closer to his last hold-out, a three-storey office building in the centre of his Ramallah headquarters complex.

His themes were consistent and defiant: the Israeli military onslaught that sees his regime closer than ever to destruction, while characterised by Israel as an effort to prevent further Palestinian terrorism, is actually the beginning of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's long-planned reoccupation of the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Its timing, though described by Mr Sharon as an inevitable response to this week's attacks on Israelis in Netanya, Jerusalem and settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, is in fact a typically brutal Israeli riposte to Thursday's unprecedented Saudi-led Arab Summit offer of land-for-peace. And one of its prime targets, even if Mr Sharon has assured the Americans to the contrary, is the very symbol of the Palestinian cause - Mr Arafat himself.

At an early morning press conference, the heads of all the parties in his coalition alongside him, Mr Sharon had declared that Israel now considered Mr Arafat "an enemy", but claimed that, "at this stage", it was bent on isolating him rather than harming him directly. Not so, said Mr Arafat, talking to the Al-Jazeera satellite channel.

"They want me under arrest, or in exile, or dead. But I am telling them, I prefer to be martyred.No one is excited, scared or hesitant. May God grant me a martyr's death."

If Mr Sharon was indeed intending not to hurt the Palestinian leader, his troops were certainly coming close. Dozens of tanks moved into Ramallah before dawn and, in contrast, to an incursion earlier this month, they did not halt outside Mr Arafat's 15-building headquarters compound.

Instead, bulldozers punched holes in perimeter walls and sides of buildings, and tanks and armoured personnel carriers burst through.

Building after building in the complex came under Israeli control - with five Palestinians and an Israeli soldier killed in the fighting. One of the dead was a young Palestinian woman, who reportedly ran into the street when woken up by the rumbling tanks; another was an elderly man hit close to Mr Arafat's office at dawn, apparently when walking to prayers.

In room-by-room searches of the HQ buildings, Gen Yitzhak Eitan, the commander of the Israeli forces, said his troops had arrested 70 people linked to the "terrorist infrastructure" that Mr Sharon said he wanted destroyed, and captured "a great deal of weaponry and ammunition".

Among the buildings overrun was the jail, where several men alleged to have planned and carried out the murder of the Israeli tourism minister, Mr Rehavam Ze'evi, last October, and arrested recently by Mr Arafat under Israeli pressure, were being held. Gen Eitan insisted, however, that "our forces have not attacked the area" where Mr Arafat was located, even though "to our sorrow, we have been fired on from his offices".

Mr Yasser Abed Rabbo, the Palestinian Authority's Minister of Information, who was at Mr Arafat's side, told a different story. As darkness fell, he echoed reports that had Mr Arafat bundled away to a lower floor as Israeli soldiers exchanged fire with some of his guards, one of whom was killed, through a hole in the wall of the building.

"Israeli tanks are at Arafat's door, and they are not allowing anyone in or out," said Mr Abed Rabbo. "They are firing directly at Arafat's office. They are targeting him. His life is in danger."

And the night was still young.