RAMALLAH, 24 May — Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat said yesterday for the first time that he would hold elections by early next year and backed away from his condition for an Israel military pullout before a ballot could take place. Responding to strong demands for reform both from Palestinians and the United States, Arafat told Reuters in an interview: “In the winter there will be elections for the open (legislative) council and the presidential election as well.” He added that regional and municipal elections would also take place, by the end of the year.
It was the first time Arafat had personally set a time frame for elections. Last week, he said elections could only be held when Israeli occupation ended. But when asked whether he was sticking to the condition of an Israeli withdrawal, he said yesterday: “Not conditional. Not conditional.”
Arafat brushed aside strong criticism of his leadership by President George W. Bush and called for US pressure on Israel to withdraw from Palestinian-ruled areas. “I am not looking at what he is saying, I am looking for results,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Election Commission tasked with organizing polls promised by Arafat last week has resigned, members of the organization told AFP yesterday, giving different reasons. Muhammad Eshtayal said the committee had stepped down over a conflict of interest, given that one of its nine members was a minister and another a senior member of the Palestinian Authority. But another member, who asked not to be named, said the committee resigned on Wednesday because Arafat had failed to decree a date for the polls and the Parliament had not approved the electoral law promulgated in 1995.
In another development, suspected militants tried to set ablaze a main Israeli fuel pumping depot near Tel Aviv yesterday, hours after a bomber killed two Israelis in a park full of chess and backgammon players. Israeli police said they suspected militants had planted a bomb on the back of a tanker truck and detonated it by remote control as it refueled. Workers at the plant outside Herzliya put out a fire caused by the blast before it could spread.
The bombing in Rishon Letzion, which killed two Israelis and wounded 27, was the second in an Israeli town in three days. The blasts break a lull in such attacks since last month’s West Bank military offensive, which Israel said was aimed at destroying militant networks behind the bombings.
Israeli tanks rolled into Palestinian-controlled areas of Hebron and small towns around Jenin overnight and arrested 19 Palestinians, Israel and Palestinian security sources said. Thirteen were arrested in Hebron, in the southern West Bank. The others were detained near Jenin, in the northern West Bank.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Bahrain’s King Hamad on Wednesday demanded an Israeli pullout from reoccupied Palestinian territories. The two leaders, who met in Egypt’s Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh soon after Hamad’s arrival, “confirmed the need to support the Palestinian people,” Egyptian Information Minister Safwat El-Sherif told reporters.
Mubarak and Hamad “backed the Palestinian people’s demand that Israel withdraws and lifts the siege imposed on its cities and villages,” he said. They also “reiterated the Arab vision that the Middle East peace process” should be based on “UN Security resolutions and the principle of land” occupied in 1967 by Israel in return “for peace,” he added.
