GAZA CITY, 4 June — The Palestinian High Court yesterday ordered the release of Ahmed Saadat, head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) jailed in Jericho under international supervision, leaving Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in a quandary.
The move met with instant condemnation by Israel, which accuses Saadat of involvement in the assassination last October of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi. It also posed the first major challenge for Arafat’s campaign to reform the Palestinian Authority.
The three-judge Palestinian court in Gaza City ruled there was no evidence linking Saadat to the PFLP’s assassination of Zeevi, his lawyer Raji Surani told reporters. "We call on the Palestinian Authority, if it respects Palestinian law, to implement this decision," said Surani.
Israel immediately slammed the ruling and said it would be going after Saadat, with Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer warning that the Jewish state would have a free hand to act against Saadat if he was released.
"Freeing him would be a violation of the agreement with the Americans and the British and in this case Israel would be free to act in accordance with its security requirements," Ben Eliezer told military radio. The previous political head of the PFLP, Abu Ali Mustapha, was assassinated by Israel last August.
Israel has accused Saadat of ordering the slaying of Zeevi in revenge for Mustapha’s death. "This (court) decision is very serious. If it ends up that (the decision) is applied and he is freed, we will demand his extradition. He is an assassin," said Raanan Gissin, a spokesman for the hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Saadat was detained last month in Jericho along with five other men wanted by Israel in a US- and British-brokered deal to end the Israeli Army’s siege of Arafat’s Ramallah headquarters.
A Palestinian military tribunal convicted four of the men, members of the PFLP, for the killing of Zeevi. Palestinian security forces in Jericho, where the men were placed in a Palestinian jail under US and British supervision on May 1, said they had received no order yet for Saadat to be released.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat warned that Arafat now faced a "dilemma" over the judicial ruling. "This is the highest court of the land and I believe its decisions must be respected," said Erekat. "And I believe President Arafat is in a dilemma," he said. "On the one hand he has to comply with this decision.
Meanwhile, European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana yesterday called Syria’s and Lebanon’s participation crucial to the Middle East peace process, the official SANA news agency reported in Damascus. "It is impossible to dream of a peace process in the region without Syria and Lebanon," Solana was quoted as telling Syrian President Bashar Assad in a meeting.
For his part, Bashar said he welcomed the intervention of the international community, particularly the European Union, in finding a solution to the seemingly intractable Arab-Israeli conflict.
