OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, September 30 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – Amidst the mixed response to the Israeli army’s lifting of the 10-day siege around the West Bank offices of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat on Sunday, September 29, Israeli Infrastructure Minister Efi Eitam, welcomed the move, saying a U.S. strike on Iraq was top priority.

“The Americans come up to us and say: ‘Friends, you surrounding the Muqataa with tanks is causing us a problem when we’re trying to recruit the international support we need for a hit on Iraq,’” the extreme right-winger told public radio.

Eitam is a member of Israel’s security cabinet and heads the ultra-nationalist National Religious Party,

“It is right that Israel should respect these interests and pull back its tanks,” he said, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Trade and Industry Minister Dalia Itzik, a member of the dovish Labor Party, said “the decision to pull out from the Muqataa so suddenly raises a lot of questions” while Tourism Minister Yitzak Levy said the siege should have ended much earlier.

“It should have ended much sooner, I’m sorry we put so much pressure on the Americans,” the right-wing minister said, adding he believed those who were holed up inside should be exiled abroad and not to Gaza.

“I would have reservations about exiling them to Gaza. I think that in Gaza they will continue to operate. I prefer abroad, as far away as possible,” he said. “It would be even better, if possible, to throw out another few thousand.”

Major-General Amos Gilad, coordinator of army operations in the territories, said both the government’s decision to surround Arafat’s office and the decision to pull out, were right because it was necessary to send the Palestinians a message that “terror shouldn't exist.”

As a result of the operation, “Israel’s defensive ability was increased because it created real fear among the Palestinians that Arafat would be banished,” the radio quoted him as saying.

Former Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu criticized the decision to call off the siege, saying Israel should have removed Arafat.

“The only right thing to do is to get rid of Arafat, whether that is to Tehran or to Paris, which would be even better,” he told army radio. “Halfway steps won’t help any more.”

Egypt and the Arab League said on Sunday the end of Israel’s 10-day blockade of Arafat’s compound did not go far enough and demanded that Israel lift its siege of the Palestinian people.

“The siege that must be lifted is the siege imposed on the Palestinian people,” said Egypt’s Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher.

The pullout of Israeli troops from Arafat’s compound “is a first step. It is proof that international efforts in and outside the framework of the U.N. Security Council can force Israel to stop its attack,” he said.

He called on Israel to comply with international resolutions, to “stop its aggression against the Palestinian people” and commit to a peaceful settlement to the Middle East conflict.

Maher said U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told him in a phone call of the Israeli troop withdrawal from Arafat’s offices.

For its part, the Arab League called the Israeli withdrawal from Arafat’s offices “insufficient” and said Israel should withdraw to its positions before the eruption of the intifada in September 2000, stressing that U.N. Security Council resolution 1435, passed last week, demanded such a pullout.

Egypt was the first Arab country to sign a peace deal with Israel in 1979 and serves as a mediator between Israel and the Arab world.

Meanwhile, the U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan on Sunday welcomed Israel’s decision to end its siege and urged both sides to return to negotiations.

“The best path away from violence and stalemate is through ... a complete end of violence, the early establishment of a Palestinian state with provisional borders and a just and comprehensive settlement to the conflict,” Annan’s spokesman said in a statement.

Annan said that once the Security Council resolution demanding a complete cessation of violence and a withdrawal of Israeli occupying forces from Palestinian cities to September 2000-era positions, they should “return to the negotiating table,” the spokesman said.