Arafat Denies West Bank’s Arabs Challenge His Role

Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat on Sunday denied that any local figures are emerging to challenge his leadership of Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“We see our people as one unit inside and outside the occupied territories, one leadership, and one resistance and one struggle,” Arafat said in an interview on CBS television’s “Face the Nation.”

Both Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir have expressed a willingness to talk to “local leaders” once unrest in the occupied territories abates. They refuse to negotiate with the PLO.

Arafat was combative throughout the interview but suggested a willingness to recognize the right of Israel to exist in exchange for Israel’s recognition of the PLO.

Proposal Resisted

But Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, was interviewed after Arafat and rejected such an exchange, calling the PLO “the terrorist organization of our time.”

Arafat said the PLO wants peace with Israel, but Netanyahu disagreed, saying: “They’re (the PLO) trying to box us into a place where we get out (of the occupied territories), they get in and use these territories for our destruction.”

Arafat called for the placement of a U.N. peacekeeping force to quell the unrest in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that has killed at least 36 Palestinians since December.

Netanyahu said Israel would not accept a such a force, calling instead for rehabilitation of the refugee camps, an end to military government and Palestinian autonomy in the occupied areas.

“We do not accept autonomy,” Arafat said.

Autonomy as Interim Step

But Palestinian editor Hanna Siniora, who was recently arrested and freed in Israel, said the Palestinians, including Arafat, would accept autonomy as an interim step toward independence.

“Autonomy is a step that would lead eventually to negotiations between the state of Israel and the PLO, ending in a Palestinian state emerging as a result of those negotiations,” said Siniora, who was interviewed on the same television show.

Siniora also disavowed the possibility that Israeli officials could turn to local Palestinian leaders for help in quelling the unrest in the occupied territories.

“The Palestinians have indicated their choice that the Palestinians should be represented by the Palestinian representative, which is the PLO,” he said.

Netanyahu, a member of the right-wing Likud Bloc, said that quelling unrest in the area must precede talks on a long-term solution in the area. He denied reports that Israeli officials are preventing food from reaching the West Bank and Gaza Strip.