RAMALLAH, West Bank, 30 September — Blowing kisses and making a V-for-Victory sign, Yasser Arafat emerged from his battered compound yesterday after Israeli forces retreated under intense US pressure to lift an internationally condemned siege. The pullback was an embarrassing climbdown by Israel, which had vowed to end the siege only when the Palestinian president surrendered some 50 suspected fighters holed up with him in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
The about-face followed a message by US President George W. Bush to the hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon demanding a speedy end to a blockade that Washington apparently feared could hurt its efforts to win international support for war on Iraq. “We correctly preferred to give a boost to the matter of an American attack on the Iraqis over something we can always do later,” said Ephraim Eitam, an ultranationalist member of Israel’s Cabinet.
The White House said Bush welcomed the Israeli pullback, which Arafat called deceptive because Israeli forces remained in Ramallah — still under night curfew — and other West Bank cities reoccupied in June after suicide bombings. “All parties need to live up to their responsibilities to promote peace, stability and reform in the Palestinian Authority,” White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.
The pullback was the most extensive after months of siege and curfew, with Palestinian security forces saying at one point there were no longer Israeli troops visible in the city. However, the Israeli Army denied it had left, and returned in a light deployment later in the evening, announcing by loudspeaker from jeeps that a curfew was in place. A column of 10 tanks and armored vehicles made a brief patrol through the eastern edge of the city late last night.
A senior Palestinian security official noted that in any case Israeli soldiers could be back on Arafat’s doorstep “in three minutes” as they have a large base at the settlement of Beit El on the northern edge of town. Arafat and his aides were unimpressed with the withdrawal, saying it was designed to hoodwink the international community into believing the siege — provoked by two suicide bombings inside Israel — had ended.
“They haven’t withdrawn — they have redeployed and are still several meters around the compound,” the Palestinian president told reporters inside his damaged offices. “This is not implementation of the Security Council Resolution 1435, it is playing around with international opinion,” he said, looking tired and pale after his ordeal. “The Israelis must withdraw immediately from not only the compound but all the Palestinian cities.”
Hundreds of elated Palestinians rushed to the presidential complex in Ramallah after Israeli tanks pulled back from the compound they invaded 10 days ago in response to suicide bombings that killed seven people in Israel. The Palestinian flag was raised above a partly demolished building in the sprawling complex that Israeli armored bulldozers and explosives largely reduced to rubble in what Israel had hoped would be a blow to Arafat’s prestige.
Instead, Palestinians rallied nightly in the West Bank and Gaza in support of a leader who had been under fire from his own people over the slow pace of reforms demanded by the United States as a condition for resuming talks on statehood. Against the backdrop of sandbags at the entrance to his office block — the only building the army left standing — a smiling Arafat emerged in his trademark fatigues and headdress to raise his arms in a victory salute as the crowd cheered.
But in earlier comments to reporters inside his office, he said the Israelis had not complied with a Sept. 24 UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate end to the siege and “expeditious withdrawal ... from Palestinian cities”. “This is not withdrawal,” Arafat said. “This is only moving a few meters away. They are trying to deceive the world.”
He repeated a call for a “complete cease-fire”, an appeal unlikely to lead to any breakthrough without agreement by activist groups that have rejected truce efforts in the past.
Israel said its troops would stay close enough to the compound to prevent the escape of the 50 wanted persons it said were inside. But Israeli television showed armed men slipping away soon after the tanks pulled back.
Visiting the complex after the pullback, Terje Roed-Larsen, the UN’s top envoy to the Middle East, told reporters: “I find reason to commend the Israeli government for doing the right thing, but it has to be used as an opportunity for going back to the negotiating table to find a peaceful solution.”
As the Israeli tanks left, Sharon boarded a plane for Moscow where he will hold talks with President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials on issues including Israeli concerns that Iraq was amassing weapons of mass destruction. The Israeli leader had faced a barrage of criticism in the Israeli media for what many commentators saw as a misconceived and internationally damaging move against Arafat for attacks committed by militant groups he does not control.
