RAMALLAH/WASHINGTON, 3 May — Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat stepped out into freedom yesterday, blasting the Israelis, vowing to rebuild his shattered Palestinian Authority and demanding an end to violence around Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity. But Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who has brazenly defied the United Nations and the world opinion warned Arafat might not be allowed to return to the West Bank if he travels abroad. But, the United States rejected Israel’s position that Arafat might not be allowed back to the West Bank if he leaves to meet Arab leaders.
"We are reserving the right to keep him out," Sharon said as he appeared on ABC’s "Nightline" television program late Wednesday.
Arafat, meanwhile, said he had no immediate plans to travel outside the West Bank
He issued a passionate appeal to the international community to move quickly to stop Israel’s big crime.
Looking haggard but smiling, Arafat flashed the "V" sign and made his way through the adoring throng to an armored car for a 3-1 2 hour tour of devastation wrought by the Israelis in Ramallah. "It is racism, it is fascism," he told reporters as he visited the local chamber of commerce, a cemetery, a hospital and the destroyed headquarters of his security chief just outside the city. "Jenin has turned into Jeningrad," Arafat told CNN.
In Washington, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said yesterday that President Bush had no plans to meet with Arafat because the just-freed Palestinian leader has yet to earn his trust. "The president will continue to meet with Sharon as well as numerous Arab leaders," the spokesman added days ahead of separate visits here by the Israeli leader and by Jordan’s King Abdallah.
Fleischer said Arafat is "free to lead" now that the Israeli siege of his headquarters in Ramallah has ended, but should move constructively toward peace rather than "speak ill of others." Fleischer also said Arafat’s freedom under a US-brokered deal includes the freedom to travel away from the West Bank and to return.
President Bush said again yesterday he envisions a Palestinian state living in peace with its neighbor Israel and founded upon democratic principles.
"A Palestinian state must be achieved by negotiating an end to occupation, but such a state cannot be based on a foundation of terror or corruption," the president said. "A Palestinian state must be based on the principles that are critical to freedom and prosperity: democracy and open markets, the rule of law, transparent and accountable administration, and respect for individual liberties and civil society."
Bush said the talks with Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard, were very successful and added the Kingdom is playing a very constructive role in the solution of Middle East crisis.
In Bethlehem, Israeli soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian and wounded at least two others in the Church of the Nativity during the day and troops staged a brief incursion early in the morning into the West Bank town of Tulkaram. A Palestinian source inside the church told AFP by telephone that some sections of the compound had caught fire after the Israelis tried to storm the church.
Bethlehem Mayor Hanna Nasser said the United States and Britain were now involved in negotiations aimed at lifting the Israeli siege on Bethlehem’s church and that drastic changes would take place within 72 hours.
Arafat called the Bethlehem siege a "religious crime".
An Anglican bishop said after talks with Arafat that the Palestinian leader had said he was ready to go to the church to try to end the standoff and pray with the people inside. During a series of overnight raids in the West bank Israeli troops rounded up 112 Palestinians.
The Israeli Army arrested a local chief of the Islamic Jihad in an incursion yesterday into a self-rule area of the West Bank town of Hebron, Palestinian security sources said.
Troops in jeeps drove up to the home of Muhammad Breiwich, 50, and arrested him, they said.
The swoop on the Al-Arub camp near Hebron in the southern West Bank netted 30 Palestinians sought by Israeli security services among the 112 arrested.
The Israeli Army carried out incursions into two Palestinian-controlled areas of the Gaza Strip yesterday, Palestinian security sources said.
In Rafah, on the Egyptian border in the south, five tanks opened fire as they and two bulldozers entered that town. Four people were wounded, including a woman suffering from a serious chest injury.
Four tanks and a bulldozer moved into the town of Deir El-Balah, in the central part of the strip, damaging the wall surrounding a building.
A top Vatican envoy aiming to help end the siege of Bethlehem’s church got a tough reception yesterday from the Israeli president, who accused Christians of keeping "silent" over the role of Palestinians in the standoff.
French Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, one of Pope John Paul’s closest aides also met Arafat.
Some 10 foreign pacifists managed yesterday to slip into the besieged church, declared a closed military zone by the Israeli Army, an AFP photographer at the scene said.
Abdel Aziz Al-Rantissi, a senior Hamas leader, warned the group would launch new operations in the coming days or weeks. "The resistance is still strong," he told BBC radio.
Meanwhile, the UN Security Council was deadlocked yesterday over Israel’s decision to block the fact-finding mission into the devastated Jenin refugee camp with few prospects of an immediate breakthrough.
Ambassador Kishore Mahbubani of Singapore, this month’s council president, drafted a letter expressing "deep regret" at the mission’s cancellation but backing Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s plans to abandon the mission.
Arab countries opposed the scrapping the fact-finding team by preventing the UN Security Council from officially accepting the end of the mission.
Palestinian envoy Nasser Al-Kidwa said the Arab group at the United Nations plans to call for a public debate in the 15-nation council or for a session of the 189-nation UN General Assembly to discuss the failure of the three-member team, now marooned in Geneva for a week.
"The main thing is for the Security Council to adopt a position with regard to Israel" for stopping the investigation, Al-Kidwa said. He said Arab countries have concluded that an open debate would expose the facts on Jenin.
The United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia — the diplomatic "quartet" on the Middle East — said yesterday they would organize an international peace conference for the region early this summer.
