Arafat Meets Hamas, Frees Some Militants

PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat on Thursday eased his confrontation with the Gaza Strip’s powerful Islamic movement, meeting the leaders of the largest group for the first time and releasing some of the 70 Muslim fundamentalists arrested in police sweeps earlier this week.

In a visit to Gaza’s Islamic University, Arafat told the leaders of Hamas that they and other fundamentalists are fully entitled to participate in Palestinian politics as long as they do not resort to violence, but warned that the Palestinian police strike hard at those who do use violence.

He said the new Palestinian Authority will issue a license for a new Hamas newspaper, Al Watan (the Nation), and he challenged Hamas, which claims the support of more than half of Gaza’s 850,000 people, to form a political party and contest forthcoming elections.

“We in the Palestine Liberation Organization are not afraid of Hamas, and Hamas has no reason to fear us,” Arafat said, according to a PLO account of the hourlong meeting. “Palestine will be a democracy as long as we all play by the rules of democracy.”

Hamas, an Arabic acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement, and a number of other fundamentalist and leftist Palestinian groups oppose the autonomy agreement reached a year ago between the PLO and Israel. They have made clear their determination to continue attacks upon Israeli forces and settlers.

“Arafat is caught between two sides--between us and the Israelis,” Dr. Mahmoud Zahhar, a Hamas leader, said in an interview before his meeting with Arafat. “Hamas understands the game well. Israel will push Arafat harder and harder, and this will bring him into internal conflicts more and more. If he doesn’t respond, well, Israel will finish him.”

Arafat, however, appears to be wooing Hamas, hoping to win local cooperation in Gaza while cracking down on more extreme and peripheral groups, such as Islamic Jihad. In his meeting at Islamic University, he stressed his desire for a dialogue with Hamas and praised it for its service to the community.

Earlier this week, Arafat ordered the Palestinian police to round up members of Islamic Jihad following its claim of responsibility for an ambush of an Israeli patrol guarding one of the Jewish settlements that remain in Gaza. One Israeli soldier was killed and two were wounded.

Responding to angry Israeli demands for an immediate crackdown, Arafat told special internal security units to arrest as many members of Islamic Jihad as they could find, according to Palestinian sources. He authorized further arrests of members of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine after it announced its militia had carried out a similar attack.

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But the moves, a demonstration of Arafat’s power and his willingness to use it, aroused considerable concern--even within his own Cabinet.

“Mass arrests are political arrests, and they are against the law,” Freih abu Medeen, the Palestinian justice minister, said. “To make an arrest, you must have evidence and go to a specific address and detain a specific person. You can’t just sweep through a mosque and pick up those you find. . . .

“As justice minister, I must see that the president (Arafat) and the police observe the law. Bringing people in for investigation is permitted, but I am telling the president that this is not the way.”

The families of many of those arrested protested outside the Gaza City prison Thursday, chanting slogans that accused Arafat of establishing a dictatorship and demanding the release of the detained men.

About 20 of those arrested were later released, and Palestinian observers speculated that virtually all would be freed by early next week.

“The likelihood of our finding out who carried out the ambush against the Israeli patrol is very small with this kind of investigation,” a Palestinian security official said.

“Islamic Jihad, or whoever carried out the attack, wanted to demonstrate its power--to fight the Israelis, to embarrass us, whatever.

In response, we have to demonstrate our determination to defend the Palestinian Authority.”

Fathi Shkaki, the head of Islamic Jihad, called Arafat a “criminal” for ordering his supporters’ arrests.

In a statement faxed from his headquarters in Damascus, the Syrian capital, Shkaki said Arafat “would be deluding himself if he believed that Islamic Jihad will be silent about the arrest of its sons or any harm to them. The anger of the people and the vengeance of the holy strugglers will not wait long.”