JERUSALEM, 7 September 2004 — Israel renewed its threat yesterday to remove Yasser Arafat but hinted it had delayed taking action against the Palestinian president to avoid complicating a planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said on Army Radio that a security Cabinet decision of a year ago to expel Arafat “is still valid today” and that Israel would “find the way and right timing to bring about Arafat’s removal from the area”.

Senior Israeli officials have reaffirmed the threat against Arafat several times before, but political sources say such a move is all but impossible as long as the United States, Israel’s main ally, strongly opposes it.

Israel drew international condemnation last September when it decided “in principle” to remove Arafat, confined to his battered headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah for more than two and a half years. But the Cabinet set no date.

Mofaz called Arafat an “obstacle to any future (peace) process”, in comments broadcast six days after Palestinian suicide bombers killed 16 people on two buses in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba.

Asked why Israel has delayed implementing the decision against Arafat, Mofaz implied this was to avoid aggravating tensions that could disrupt a plan to evacuate Israeli settlers and soldiers from the Gaza Strip next year. “What guides us now ... is firstly to carry out the disengagement plan,” Mofaz said.

Mofaz also announced plans to build a second network of fences around settlements in the south of the West Bank in addition to the larger separation wall which is being constructed across the territory.

Mofaz told the radio that a 10-kilometer section of the original route of the larger wall, which would have incorporated the settlements in the Hebron area, had been modified after a recent Supreme Court decision.

Meanwhile, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit met with Arafat yesterday to discuss Cairo’s plans to help ensure security in the Gaza Strip after Israel’s pullout from the territory. Abul Gheit gave away few details of how Cairo intended to help avoid any descent into chaos on its doorsteps after the pullout.

But he said in a press conference with Arafat that he had updated the veteran leader with President Hosni Mubarak’s assessment of the situation and of a measures which would soon be implemented.

“We heard the ideas of President Arafat and our Palestinian brothers and have briefed them on Cairo’s evaluation of the regional and international context and of ways of putting into place a series of measures in the near future,” he said.

While Abul Gheit did not give any details about the “measures”, the head of the Palestinian police force, Gen. Saeb Al-Ajez, said 45 of his officers would soon travel to Cairo for training.

Arafat thanked Egypt for its efforts to revive the peace process and appealed for the implementation of the road map peace plan, the international blueprint which aims for the creation of a Palestinian state next year.

The road map has made next to no progress since its launch last year amid mutual accusations by the Israelis and Palestinians that its terms are being violated.

The Gaza pullout forms part of a larger program of “disengagement” being pursued by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in the absence of any progress in the bilateral peace process. Sharon was expected to meet later in the day with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, whose government is one of the four sponsors of the road map.