|
Sharon
Might Bar Arafat From Returning To Ramallah
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| Arafat
may remain in exile from home if allowed to leave for Arab
summit. |
OCCUPIED
JERUSALEM, March 19 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - While
hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said he will allow
Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to leave the Palestinian
territories if he "implements the U.S.-brokered Tenet ceasefire
agreement”, he did not rule out barring Arafat from returning if
he uttered what he described as "incitements to violence"
while abroad.
"I
told the Vice President that the implementation of Tenet will enable
Arafat to go outside the Palestinian territories," Sharon told
a news conference after a meeting with U.S. Vice President Dick
Cheney.
On
Monday, U.S. President George W. Bush said that any meeting between
Cheney and Arafat depended on advice from U.S. Middle East envoy
Anthony Zinni.
"The
answer to who the Vice President ought to meet with, or not meet,
depends upon General Zinni's recommendations. He is the man on the
ground," the U.S. leader said, quoted by Agence France-Presse
(AFP).
The
Vice President has sparked Palestinian anger by not scheduling a
meeting with Arafat, although senior U.S. officials have not ruled
out a face-to-face encounter.
Bush
also mentioned he had recently spoken to Cheney before the U.S. Vice
president -- in Israel as part of a 10-day, 12-nation trip to drum
up support for an expected U.S. strike on sanctions-hit Iraq -- met
with Sharon.
"He
had General Zinni with him. General Zinni is optimistic that we are
making some progress in the Middle East," said Bush.
In
his three-hour meeting with Sharon, Cheney "discussed regional
and local issues of mutual interest, as well as furthering relations
between Israel and the United States," a Sharon spokesman told
AFP.
On
arrival, he called on the Palestinian President "to live up to
his commitment and renounce once and for all violence as a political
weapon."
Meanwhile,
the Israeli occupation army claimed Tuesday it had completed its
withdrawal from self-rule Palestinian territories that it had been
occupying, with a pullout from the Bethlehem area of the West Bank
and the north of the Gaza Strip.
"The
Israeli army withdrew during the night from positions it was
occupying in the territories situated in zone A in the Bethlehem
sector and in the north of the Gaza Strip," an Israeli military
spokesman said in a statement carried by Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Zone A refers to autonomous Palestinian areas.
At
the same time, Israeli occupation forces enforced a curfew in the
village of Zabuba in Jenin District early Tuesday morning, the
Palestinian News Agency (WAFA) reported. The forces stormed the
Palestinian village and announced a curfew through loud speakers.
And
in Gaza, Dr. Moawya Hasanein, the director of the emergency
department in the Al-Shifa Hospital, announced that early Tuesday
Sulaiman Al-Zarei, a 50-year-old Palestinian, was killed after being
hit by a missile fired from an Israeli tank, WAFA reported.
Meanwhile,
in an interview with Qatari newspaper Al-Watan, Sheikh Hassan
Nassrallah, the head of the Lebanese Resistance Movement, Hezbollah,
urged the Arab summit to discuss sending support and weapons to
Palestinians in face of continued Israeli offensives and incursions.
"The
Arab summit is called upon to decide to supply and transport weapons
to the Palestinians," Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said.
"If
they [the Palestinians] had weapons, the [Israeli] occupation forces
could not penetrate into autonomous Palestinian cities,"
Nasrallah argued.
He
said supplying arms to the Palestinians was a "legal" act
and that "the terrorist is not the one who gives such weapons
... but those who give them to [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel]
Sharon; in other words the U.S. administration."
"The
Palestinians do not need Arab troops ... but weapons," he said.
Heads
of state of the 22-member Arab League are to meet in Beirut on March
27-28, with a Saudi land-for-peace initiative with Israel at the top
of their agenda.
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