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Arafat Emerges from Siege, Slams Israel for Nativity Church Attack & Jenin Massacre
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Arafat
flashes victory sign as he emerges from his West Bank
headquarters in Ramallah. |
RAMALLAH, West
Bank, May 2 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – Palestinian
President Yasser Arafat emerged early Thursday morning, May 2, from
Israel's month-long siege of his headquarters, lashing out at Israel
over its latest attack on Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, and
accusing it of executing a massacre in the West Bank refugee camp of
Jenin, comparing it to the battle of Stalingrad in World War II.
Trembling and
pale, Arafat strongly criticized the dangerous standoff in Bethlehem
between the Israeli
occupation army and the 200 Palestinian civilians trapped inside the
Church of the Nativity.
"It is
unacceptable," Agence France-Presse (AFP) quoted Arafat as
saying, while thumping his index finger against a table as he spoke
about the late night raging fire by Bethlehem's Christian shrine.
"It is
unacceptable for the Palestinians, for the Arabs, for the Muslims, for
the Christians, for the United Nations, for the United States and for
Russia."
Arafat accused Israeli
occupation soldiers of being "terrorists, Nazis and
racists," said AFP. Israeli massacred up to 500 civilians in the
rubble-reduced refugee camp of Jenin alone.
Arafat compared
the nine-day deadly Israeli offensive against ruined Jenin to the
devastating World War II battle of Stalingrad that obliterated the
former Soviet city and killed more than 600,000 people.
"Jenin has
turned into Jeningrad, instead of Stalingrad. Remember something like
that, Stalingrad? Now, Jeningrad," Arafat told CNN.
Arafat said he
planned to travel in the West Bank to see damage caused by the Israeli
incursions. "Definitely I have to go to Jenin," he told U.S.
ABC television network’s "Nightline." "I have to go
to Jericho. I have to go to Hebron. I have to go to Bethlehem. I have
to go everywhere that has been destroyed. I have to be there."
"If the
opportunity was open again, and the tanks were not around me in the
morning again, I will go and see what happened in our cities and
towns, the disasters and crimes," said Arafat.
Arafat noted
that travel to other countries "is not the first item for me.”
Far-right Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told “Nightline”
that he would not allow Arafat the right to return to Palestinian
territories should the Palestinian president decide to travel abroad.
"We are not
giving any guarantees for that," Sharon said.
Arafat called
the Israeli
offensives against the occupied Palestinian territories "a big
crime," adding that he was asking for "the whole world to
move quickly to stop this crime."
But, he
reaffirmed his commitment to the Middle
East
peace process, saying he had to "follow up" on the peace
agreement he concluded with the late Israeli
prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated by an Israeli
extremist.
Arafat’s long
awaited freedom was celebrated by more than 1,000 Palestinians outside
his compound early Thursday, May 2. The jubilant crowd flashed victory
signs and chanted victory slogans.
Meanwhile, in
Bethlehem, Israeli forces attacked late Wednesday the Church of the
Nativity compound.
A Palestinian
source inside the church told AFP by telephone that some sections of
the compound had caught fire from the assault.
"The
Israelis tried to storm the church," the Palestinian
official said.
But the blazes
were out by 2:00 am (2300 GMT) and the shooting also died down. Israeli
government and army officials denied the attack.
But
Israeli
troops and tanks immediately followed the denial with a fresh
incursion early Thursday, May 2, into the northern West Bank town of
Tulkarem. The army immediately clamped a curfew in the town, which
fell under full Israeli control, witnesses said. They reported heavy
Israeli shooting as the tanks rumbled in.
Meanwhile, a
senior Vatican envoy, French Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, one of Pope
John Paul II's closest aides, arrived in Jerusalem hoping to breathe
new life into the stalled Bethlehem talks.
The prelate was
to see Sharon and Arafat "to try to find a solution to end the
siege," said Father Raed Abu Sahlia, secretary of the Latin
Patriarchate in Jerusalem.
The Bethlehem
negotiations have stumbled over Israel's refusal to accept a Palestinian
plan to evacuate all the trapped Palestinians to the Gaza Strip and
the Palestinians' rejection of an Israeli
offer of either exile from their homeland or trial in Israel.
The United
Nations, meanwhile, struggled to come to terms with UN Secretary
General Kofi Annan's decision to disband his fact-finding panel into
the Jenin massacre after Israel repeatedly refused to cooperate with
the mission, claiming the world body’s team was “biased”.
Syria, the one Arab
member of the Security Council, insisted on pushing a draft resolution
demanding Israel's full cooperation, but Washington countered with its
own, less critical, proposal.
But Israelis,
fearing inquiry into the Jenin massacre, said they did not believe the
matter would end there in the United Nations.
"We must
expect that the Security Council, under pressure from the
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The
Israeli army made a fresh incursion early Thursday, May 2, into
Tulkarem.
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Arab
countries, will be called upon to decide on a commission of
inquiry," said Israel's UN Ambassador Yehuda Lancry.
Another peace
effort facing massive hurdles is a plan proposed by the United States
and Saudi Arabia, which builds on a full ceasefire and Israeli
withdrawal, and an international conference to agree a final
settlement and launch an independent Palestinian state.
The plan is
faced with Sharon's refusal to deal personally with Arafat and his
rejection of any freeze, let alone rollback, of Israeli settlements in
the West Bank.
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