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Palestinian schoolgirls chant slogans in support of Yasser Arafat as others wave flags during a march in Gaza City.
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OCCUPIED
RAMALLAH, West Bank, September 23 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) –
As the Palestinian resistance movement Fatah called for a strike in Gaza
to protest the Israeli army’s 4-day siege of Palestinian President
Yasser Arafat, Israeli allowed Palestinian officials to discuss ways of
ending the siege Monday, September 23.
Mahmud
Abbas, Yasser Arafat’s number two and one-time designated successor,
received Israel’s thumbs-up to discuss the siege of the Palestinian
President’s headquarters with other Palestinian officials, an Israeli
defense ministry spokesman said, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
“We
have authorized Abu Mazen (Abbas’s nom de guerre) to hold
consultations with Palestinian officials in his home” in Ramallah,
which is under strict curfew, the spokesman said.
Meanwhile,
a senior Palestinian official besieged with Arafat called Monday for
“coexistence and partnership” with Israel in “mutual security.”
Speaking
in English on Israeli public radio, Hani al-Hassan, a member of the
central committee of Arafat’s Fatah movement, said, “I want to send
a message to the Israelis.”
“We
Palestinians like to live with the Israelis side by side,” he said.
“We are looking for peace with Israel.
“Our
understanding for peace is to have coexistence and partnership and we
are ready for mutual security.”
Israeli
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said Monday that the Israeli operation
against Arafat was “a warning to the Palestinians”, while repeating
that Israel did not intend to expel him from the Palestinian territories
or harm him.
Israeli
Deputy Defense Minister Weizman Shiri said on Israeli television Sunday
that the aim of the siege was “to push him to decide to where he will
leave.”
“Even
if Arafat is not responsible for attacks, it is his responsibility to
prevent them,” Peres said, adding that while he supported the Israeli
moves he did not take pleasure in them.
Former
Israeli justice minister and Labor dove Yossi Beilin lambasted the
government’s get-tough policies.
“Only
the combination of Sharon’s determination to prevent the finding of
any Palestinian address for dialogue along with Binyamin Ben Eliezer’s
foolishness could have allowed the horror show of the demolition of the
muqataa,” he was quoted as saying by the Yediot Aharonot daily.
The
Israeli press was also critical of Israel’s policy of demolitions,
fearing that the operation was attracting too much international
sympathy for Arafat and turning him into a hero in the eyes of his
people.
“Last
week Arafat sat in his office, forgotten, isolated, wrapped in cobwebs.
This week, after the bulldozers bit into his bedroom, he is once again
carried on a wave of popular sympathy, and enlists the world, including
the president of the United States, in his favor,” the Ma’ariv daily
deplored in an editorial.
In
another development, Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement called a strike in
the Gaza Strip on Monday to show solidarity with its besieged leader.
In
response to the strike call, which Fatah said was made in consultation
with other Palestinian nationalist and Islamic factions, most businesses
were closed, although some supermarkets, pharmacies and falafel fast
food stands were open in Gaza City.
In
the southern towns of Rafah and Khan Yunis, where frequent clashes with
the Israelis occur, a complete shutdown was observed.
Schools
were open, while taxi companies were operating.
