Sharon Blames Mideast Unrest on Arafat

Ariel Sharon, leader of the right-wing Likud Party, is certain he is not to blame for the violent unrest that erupted more than a month ago in Palestinian-controlled territories and inside Israel after his visit to a disputed holy site here.

If there is a villain in this story, the Israeli politician told reporters Wednesday, it is his old nemesis: Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, the man whom Sharon pursued for decades as a general and still refers to as “a murderer of women and children.”

“Arafat is in charge of everything that is happening now. He is the commander of the Tanzim, he is the commander of the Fatah organization, he commands the internal security services,” Sharon said of key Palestinian groups. “And if he is not in control, why get into an agreement with him?”

Arafat and other Palestinians have blamed Sharon’s Sept. 28 visit to the Old City site known to Jews as Temple Mount and Muslims as Haram al Sharif for the outbreak of violent demonstrations that began in the compound, spread across the West Bank and Gaza Strip and spilled over into Israel. The violence so far has claimed the lives of more than 140 people, the overwhelming majority of them Palestinians, and wrecked prospects for achieving a final peace accord.

Most Israelis stopped caring long ago whether Sharon’s visit caused the violence, largely accepting their government’s contention that Arafat planned the riots to wrest concessions he could not win at the negotiating table. Sharon’s visit, they say, merely provided the match Arafat was looking for to ignite a conflagration.

But Palestinian officials continue to blame the visit by Sharon--among the Israelis most vilified by Palestinians--for what they say was the spontaneous reaction of their people to the perceived threat to Islam’s third-holiest site. They blame the Israeli government for ignoring their warnings that violence was inevitable unless Sharon was stopped. Arafat has accused Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak of colluding with Sharon to provoke a Palestinian response, a charge the Israelis dismiss.

Saeb Erekat, one of the chief Palestinian negotiators, insists that Arafat appealed to Barak to stop the visit three days before Sharon’s tour. Tensions over the fate of the compound had been building among Palestinians and Israelis since the collapse of peace talks at Camp David, Md., in July over the question of sovereignty over the site. Arafat made his request during a dinner at Barak’s home.

“Barak just shook his head. He said nothing,” said Erekat, who was present.

Israeli sources close to Barak say that it was impossible for the prime minister to forbid the opposition leader to visit a site that Israel rules. At the time, Barak’s aides said Sharon wanted to embarrass the government to bolster his own right-wing credentials at a time when former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was expected to challenge the retired general for Likud’s leadership.

A day after Arafat’s meeting with Barak, during talks with acting Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami in Washington, Erekat appealed to Ben-Ami and U.S. negotiator Dennis B. Ross to stop the visit, Erekat said in an interview.

“I really urged Shlomo: ‘Please, don’t give him the permission to go. He never went while he was a minister in other governments,’ ” Erekat said. “Ben-Ami said that Sharon is an elected official and he can’t stop him. Then I asked Dennis Ross to interfere and help.”

U.S. officials declined to comment on Erekat’s version of events.

Barak has denied that Arafat mentioned the planned visit during their dinner meeting. Ben-Ami has said that Col. Jibril Rajoub, the Palestinian security chief in the West Bank, assured him in a telephone conversation that Sharon’s visit would be tolerated as long as the Israeli politician did not enter Al Aqsa or the Dome of the Rock mosques at the site. Rajoub has denied saying any such thing.

About 7:30 a.m. on the day of the visit, Sharon and 14 other Likud members of parliament, surrounded by several hundred heavily armed police officers, walked up a ramp near the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest site. They entered the 36-acre compound where Jews believe that the remains of the First and Second temples of antiquity are located and Muslims believe that the prophet Muhammad ascended into heaven.

Sharon stayed away from the mosques. He also avoided a memorial to the victims of the Sabra and Shatilla massacres, the 1982 killings of hundreds of Palestinians by Israel’s Christian allies during an invasion of Lebanon that Sharon planned as defense minister.

But he was accosted by Arab members of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, and by Palestinian protesters. As the 45-minute visit ended, rocks began to fly and a riot erupted. About 30 police officers were injured in the melee.

“If we thought it was life-threatening, we would have stopped the visit from going ahead,” national police commander Yehuda Vilk said later that day. “It is our duty to allow all citizens, Jewish or Arab, to visit the Temple Mount if they so desire.”

The next day, after Friday prayers, thousands of Palestinians hurled rocks at Jewish worshipers at the Western Wall below the compound and clashed with police. At least six Palestinians were killed and more than 200 wounded, and what Palestinians call the “Al Aqsa intifada” was underway.

Jerusalem Police Chief Yair Yitzhaki recalled in an interview Wednesday that he and Vilk met with the head of the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, days before the visit and agreed that there would be trouble if Sharon went through with it.

After all, Yitzhaki said, “it is the most sensitive place in the world.” Since Israel captured the site from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East War, bloody riots have periodically erupted at or near the compound, where day-to-day control is in the hands of the Waqf, or Islamic Trust.

For Palestinians, the compound has both nationalist and religious significance. Every attempt by ultra-conservative Jewish organizations to stake claims to it, every mention by extremist Israeli religious groups of plans to rebuild the Jewish temple, is seen as a threat to Muslim rights over the mosques. Sharon’s visit came just weeks after one group persuaded Israel’s chief rabbinate to examine the possibility of building a synagogue on the Temple Mount.

But only Barak could have stopped Sharon’s tour, Yitzhaki said.

“How do you say no to 15 members of the Knesset?” Yitzhaki said. “How do you say that you shouldn’t go to the Temple Mount, not today and not another date?”

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright subsequently issued a statement saying it was Sharon’s visit that “caused these tensions.” In his speech last month in Cairo, Arafat blamed the visit for igniting what he called a religious war between Muslims and Jews.

In the briefing with foreign correspondents here Wednesday, Sharon cited an interview that aired Monday on Voice of Palestine Radio with Mahmoud Abbas, a senior Palestinian peace negotiator, as evidence of the Israeli claim that Arafat had been looking for an excuse to unleash demonstrations.

In the interview, Abbas said “the direct reason of the intifada is Sharon’s visit. However, the indirect reasons are the Israeli [peace] proposals, which are suggested to find solutions which are proper for them only.”

Sharon said he and the other lawmakers made the visit in order to assert Israeli sovereignty over a site that Barak seemed willing to compromise on during the Camp David talks and subsequent negotiations. Sharon denied that his rivalry with Netanyahu played a role in the timing.

“The Temple Mount is the holiest place of the Jewish people,” he said. “It’s mentioned in [the biblical books of] Isaiah, Jeremiah.”

Sharon said that he consulted with the security forces before making the trip. “If they had told me that it is going to involve any problems . . . I would have postponed it,” he said. “But they said: No problem.”

The trip would have passed smoothly, he insisted, if Arab lawmakers had not accosted him as TV cameras rolled, calling him a murderer and screaming at him to leave. “It was terrible incitement,” he said.

If the subsequent events have taught him anything, Sharon said, “the most important lesson is that only the full sovereignty of Israel over Jerusalem, united and undivided Jerusalem, may . . . ensure free access to every religion and every faith to the holy sites.”

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* ANOTHER TRY IN MIDEAST

Israelis and Palestinians agreed to implement a cease-fire as fighting worsened. A13