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Arafat Willing To Hold “Peace” Talks With Israel
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| Arafat faces American and Israeli pressure to quell resistance |
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, Feb. 3 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Palestinian President Yasser Arafat said Sunday he was ready to talk “peace” with any Israeli leader.
Arafat, who has been confined to his West Bank office by Israeli tanks and is under American and Israeli pressure to end retaliatory attacks on the occupation force, made his remarks in a statement published by the New York Times. "Palestinians are ready to end the conflict," Arafat said, AFP reported.
"We are ready to sit down now with any Israeli leader, regardless of his history, to negotiate freedom for the Palestinians, a complete end of the occupation,…. and creative solutions to the plight of the (Palestinian) refugees."
He stressed the Palestinians were still Israel's "partner" but said Prime Minister Ariel Sharon appeared to be delaying a return to so-called peace talks.
"Many believe that (Sharon), given his opposition to every peace treaty Israel has ever signed, is fanning the flames of unrest in an effort to delay indefinitely a return to negotiations."
Regrettably, Sharon "has done little to prove them wrong," Arafat said referring to resistance groups.
"Israeli government practices of settlement construction, home demolitions, political assassinations, closures and shameful silence in the face of Israeli settler violence and other daily humiliations are clearly not aimed at calming the situation."
Arafat faces demands from various Palestinian groups to stand in the face of international demands to clamp down on resistance activists.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) temporarily suspended Saturday its membership in the decision-making body of the Palestinian Authority to protest Arafat's arrest of its leader Ahmed Saadat.
Meanwhile, Israel’s far-right tourism minister, Benny Eilon, threatened to quit the government in protest at the meeting Sharon held secretly Wednesday with top Palestinian officials. Elion’s National Union-Yisrael Beitenu bloc with 10 MPs sees his resignation as a threat to their ambitions on the occupied Palestinian territories, AFP reported.
The apparent U-turn by Sharon, who has insisted he will never "negotiate under fire", drew sharp criticism from ultra-nationalists in his cabinet.
"Zig-zags are possible at the technical level and what Foreign Minister Shimon Peres is doing doesn't really matter," said Eilon, who replaced Rehavam Zeevi, who was assassinated by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) last October in retaliation for an earlier killing of one of its leaders.
"But we will no longer have a place in the national unity government if it's a matter of territorial concessions on the question of Greater Israel and discussion of the creation of a Palestinian state," he said.
According to public radio, Sharon met Wednesday with Palestinian parliament speaker Ahmed Qorei, Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) number two Mahmud Abbas, and Arafat's economic adviser Mohammad Rashid.
The meeting, later confirmed by both sides and according to Arafat, officially sanctioned by the Palestinian leader himself, was Sharon's first contact with Palestinian officials since coming to power a year ago.
Sharon has tried to sideline Arafat, confining him to the West Bank town of Ramallah and saying he would find other Palestinian leaders with whom to do business.
Qorei has also been working on a so-called peace plan with Peres, a Labor party dove, for the fast-track creation of a Palestinian state. "In order to stop fire you need to have some political water, so this is the nature of our talks with the Palestinians," Peres told journalists in New York after meeting Qorei.
Sharon said a few days ago that he should have killed Arafat when he had him under siege in Beirut in 1982. Sharon later said he had no intention of harming Arafat now.
In another development, the Palestinian Authority filed Saturday a formal complaint with the United States, after Israeli occupation army soldiers took over a dairy factory in Dir-el-Balah, located in the Gaza Strip earlier that day.
The Palestinians say that the factory provided all of the milk necessary for the Gaza Strip. For their part, the occupation army explained that soldiers had taken over the third floor of the factory because shooting at the Kfar Darom settlement had been traced to that building.
The building was evicted of its Palestinian occupants, despite U.S. intervention.
Arafat, 72, should be undergoing routine medical checks which are impossible as long as Israel continues to confine him to Ramallah in the West Bank, his personal doctor told AFP. "President Arafat undergoes tests every three months and it is now time for him to have them," said Ashraf al-Kurdi, a personal friend of the Palestinian leader and his official doctor since the 1980s. "Arafat must have routine examinations, and that is not possible so long as he is 'in prison'," said Kurdi, a prominent neurologist and former Jordanian minister of health.
Arafat's last routine check-up took place in Amman on November 10, 2001. Arafat had a brain surgery in June 1992. Doctors removed a blood clot which had formed following a plane accident in Libya.
Palestinian officials accused Sharon of seeking to topple Arafat and his Palestinian Authority as Israel attempts to quell the 17-month old Al Aqsa Intifada.
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