Arafat Promises Statehood Despite Likud Vote

May 13, 2002
By Timothy Heritage

JENIN (Reuters) - Yasser Arafat toured West Bank cities for the first time in five months Monday and reassured Palestinians they would win their own state, brushing aside a vow from Israel's ruling party never to allow it.

The Palestinian president visited Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, site of a five-week Israeli siege, Jenin -- scene of devastation during a recent Israeli offensive -- and Nablus seeking to reaffirm his leadership of the Palestinians.

"To Jerusalem we are headed. Jerusalem is the capital of our independent state of Palestine, never mind who agrees or does not," a defiant Arafat told a crowd in Nablus in the northern West Bank.

The trip began shortly after the right-wing Likud party voted against any future establishment of a Palestinian state, drawing Arab condemnation and international concern at a time when a diplomatic solution to the conflict seemed father away than ever.

The Likud vote at a heated party convention in Tel Aviv Sunday marked a victory for former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over incumbent Ariel Sharon in a looming battle for the party leadership.

Palestinian official Saeb Erekat said it showed Israel's true intentions and would increase Palestinians' frustration in their 19-month-old uprising against Israeli occupation.

European officials also said it would harm the search for peace and the United States, Israel's strongest ally, reiterated it supported an eventual Palestinian state.

In further West Bank violence, Israeli security forces said they killed two Palestinian gunmen in two incidents before dawn.

There was no major military action following an Israeli decision Sunday to call off a strike in the Gaza Strip planned in response to a Palestinian suicide bombing that killed 15 people last week in central Israel.

But in Gaza, Islamic militant groups said the time was not ripe for them to cease suicide attacks against Israel despite calls for restraint from Arafat and leaders of Arab states.

THRONGED BY SUPPORTERS

Arafat, who had been confined to Ramallah for five months by the Israeli army, flew into Bethlehem in a Jordanian helicopter and was thronged by supporters as he entered the church built on the spot Christians revere as Jesus's birthplace.

His visit took place three days after the standoff between the Israeli army and Palestinian militants holed up inside the Church of the Nativity ended with the 39 gunmen going into exile abroad or to the Gaza Strip.

"This place will be in our hearts and minds forever," he told reporters.

People clasped his face and kissed Arafat on both cheeks before he went to inspect the interior of the 1,700-year-old church. Arafat, a Muslim, went on to the nearby St. Catherine's Roman Catholic church where he bowed at the altar.

Thousands of people waited to greet him in the Jenin refugee camp, parts of which were flattened by Israeli troops during the offensive and where a still-undetermined number of civilians were killed as well as fighters.

He went instead to the town hall, where, standing on a desk in a packed room, he said: "People of Jenin, all the citizens of Jenin and the refugee camp, this is Jenin-grad" -- a reference to the World War Two battle of Stalingrad.

"Your battle has paved the way to the liberation of the occupied territories," he said.

Some in Jenin, however, complained about his failure to carry out any reforms.

Arafat, whose popularity among his own people soared during his confinement, has been assailed by Sharon as an unfit leader and backer of militants. The United States has urged Arafat to reform his administration but does not agree with Sharon that he must be removed.

Israel's fractious domestic politics stoked new tensions just days after Israeli forces withdrew from Bethlehem, completing their pullback from Palestinian-ruled cities in the West Bank occupied during the offensive.

An Arafat aide said Likud's rejection of a Palestinian state undermined the peace process and the 1993 Oslo accords that had laid a basis for resolving the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

"Peace, stability and security will not be achieved except by the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital," Arafat aide Nabil Abu Rdainah said.

European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana said in Brussels he regretted the Likud decision.

"Everybody has recognized that the only way to peace is through a (Palestinian) state. It is a pity that internal politics can make this process more difficult," Solana said.

A U.S. National Security Council spokesman referred to President Bush (news - web sites)'s vision of Israel and a Palestinian state living side by side in peace.

NOT TODAY, NOT TOMORROW

Sharon had told assembled party members that Palestinians must end violence and reform their political structures before he would allow talk of them establishing a state.

The party preferred the harder message delivered by Netanyahu, Sharon's chief rival, who vowed: "A state with all the rights of a state, this cannot be, not under Arafat, norunder another leadership, not today, nor tomorrow."

At least 1,349 Palestinians and 474 Israelis have been killed in the Palestinian uprising since September 2000.

On Israel's northern border, the Lebanese Army and Hizbollah guerrillas fired anti-aircraft rounds at Israeli jets that conducted mock raids over south Lebanon Monday.

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