GAZA, 21 January — Thousands of Palestinians rallied yesterday in the Gaza Strip in support of their leader Yasser Arafat, confined for weeks at his Ramallah headquarters, as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Israeli tanks are bringing the Palestinian leader to submission.
In Cairo Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said that Israel’s humiliation of the Palestinians was behind the "cycle of destruction" in the region. And US Secretary of State Colin Powell made a renewed demand that Arafat explain an arms shipment intercepted by Israel in the Red Sea on Jan. 3.
"We haven’t been able to get this (peace process) moving on track because of the continued violence," Powell told ABC television, referring to mediation efforts led by US peace envoy Anthony Zinni.
"Gen. Zinni has been to the region twice and I hope he will be able to go back again when conditions permit him to," he said.
In the West Bank city of Ramallah, where Israel tightened a ring of tanks on roads leading to Arafat’s offices, Israeli soldiers exchanged fire with Palestinians.
Eight Palestinians were wounded by shrapnel, hospital sources said.
More than 3,000 Palestinians marched in Gaza, singing patriotic songs and denouncing Israel’s virtual imprisonment of their leader. "We’ll sacrifice our blood and our souls for you, Arafat," the crowds screamed as Fatah gunmen shot in the air.
Israeli tanks remained in position just outside Arafat’s West Bank headquarters. Israeli Prime Minister Sharon was quoted in the daily Maariv as saying "it is preferable that Arafat stays locked in Ramallah instead of being expelled from the (Palestinian) territories as he could cause more harm outside."
"He opens the windows of his Ramallah offices, he sees our tanks and knows he has nowhere to go. He is dying to travel and fly off, it’s making him sick since he knows he is locked up in our jail," Sharon was quoted as saying.
"How can this be tolerated by the international community?" Arafat said in an interview with Newsweek.
Egyptian President Mubarak linked the credibility of the international campaign against terrorism to the success of the West and the United Nations in seeing the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.
"It is necessary for the international campaign against terrorism to run in parallel with serious and credible efforts to apply international resolutions, notably in the Middle East which is witnessing an unprecedented escalation in the cycle of violence, of destruction, and hegemony," he said.
The violence resulted from "Israel’s total neglect of its obligations as an occupation force, and its persistence in humiliating the unarmed Palestinian people, and its refusal to enter into serious peace negotiations," he said.
