OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 25 February — Israel decided yesterday to keep Palestinian President Yasser Arafat confined to the West Bank city of Ramallah even though he has ordered the arrest of activists wanted by Israel.
The decision, overwhelmingly supported by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s 14-member security Cabinet, drew swift Palestinian condemnation, cancellation of joint security talks and raised tensions after renewed efforts to calm violence. “There won’t be any meetings with the Israelis for the time being, whether it’s on the security level or the political level,” Nabil Abu Rudainah, a senior Arafat aide, told reporters.
Announcing that Israel would continue to prevent Arafat leaving Ramallah, Sharon said the army would ease its two-month-old tank blockade of Arafat’s headquarters compound in Ramallah and let him move freely around the city.
“It is a shameless and unacceptable decision,” Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat said.
“I hope the United States and Europe will recognize that this government’s program will only lead the region into war and bloodshed and the whole world should intervene before it is too late,” he added.
An Israeli Defense Ministry spokesman said Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer had already ordered the army to remove the tanks around Arafat’s headquarters.
But Palestinian witnesses said Arafat has recently been traveling within the city without Israeli interference, visiting a hospital last week to comfort wounded Palestinians and praying in a mosque on Friday.
Reading from the security Cabinet’s decision, Sharon said he would personally decide on any future request by Arafat to leave Ramallah.
Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo said the decision was aimed at “humiliating the Palestinian people,” and called on Arab states to also cut all contacts with Israel.
Israel had made lifting the restrictions contingent on the arrest of militants who assassinated Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi in October. Sharon said Israel now wanted the men extradited to stand trial in the Jewish state.
Meanwhile, the armed wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) yesterday warned the Palestinian Authority against harming the three activists arrested in connection with the killing of Zeevi.
In another development, Israeli tanks yesterday moved several meters into Palestinian-controlled land near Rafah and Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, Palestinian security officials said. Two tanks and a bulldozer moved 400 meters into Tal Al-Sultan near Rafah, while a similar contingent moved 700 meters into Palestinian-controlled land in the Khan Yunis area, firing bursts with their machine guns but causing no injuries, the same sources said.
Later in the day, a tank and a bulldozer moved 150 meters into the central town of Deir A-Balah, while in nearby Kissufim two tanks and a bulldozer advanced some 200 meters, the security sources said.
Israeli troops fired eight bullets at the car of Palestinian parliamentary speaker Ahmed Qorei yesterday at Qalandia checkpoint at the entrance to the West Bank town of Ramallah, his office told AFP, but no injuries were reported.
In another incident, an unknown assailant opened fire on a Palestinian passenger bus near the West Bank town of Hebron injuring three civilians including a 12-year-old boy, Palestinian police and hospital sources said.
In Nablus, Israeli soldiers shot and injured a pregnant Palestinian woman in the northern West Bank early yesterday as her husband tried to take her to hospital to deliver her baby, the husband said.
In Paris, French President Jacques Chirac’s office said Chirac and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan appealed yesterday for international action to prevent the Middle East conflict spinning out of control.
