Arafat Gets 12 Hours to Arrest Militants

Israel on Wednesday offered Yasser Arafat one more chance to rein in Islamic militants, calling a timeout in its military assault on the Palestinian Authority president’s security forces just hours after another suicide bomber blew himself up in downtown Jerusalem.

The Palestinian Authority president responded by ordering that Sheik Ahmed Yassin, founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, be put under house arrest in Gaza City on Wednesday night. Thousands of Palestinians poured into the streets of Gaza before dawn today to protest the move. Some fired weapons into the air, and two Palestinian police officers and two protesters were injured, Palestinian sources said.

The clashes were evidence of the risk Arafat takes as he moves to protect his regime by fulfilling Israel’s demands that he immediately crack down on militants.

Palestinian sources said protesters pelted police in Gaza with rocks and set two police cars ablaze after mosque loudspeakers exhorted people to support the ailing, 65-year-old sheik, who is a paraplegic. The Hamas movement he founded has carried out a series of deadly bombings inside Israel and advocates the destruction of the Jewish state.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon granted a 12-hour reprieve for the Palestinians, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said, after Arafat called Peres to complain that Israeli airstrikes on his security offices were making it impossible to carry out arrests.

“I told [Arafat]: In the next 12 hours, you can determine the way in which the Palestinian Authority will be regarded,” Peres said Wednesday night on Israel Radio. “You have a list of 36 people who . . . stand behind the terror, and I very much recommend that you put them in jail.”

Palestinians Denounce Israeli Air Attacks

Israel’s decision to suspend military operations against the Palestinian Authority came one day after the government declared it a “terror-supporting entity” and unleashed aerial attacks on targets in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Palestinians have denounced the Israeli attacks, launched after more than two dozen Israelis were killed in suicide bombings over the weekend, as a declaration of war on the Palestinian Authority and its leader.

Sharon’s decision came as pressure mounted on Peres to quit the government rather than participate in what the prime minister has promised will be an escalating military campaign against Arafat.

Peres, a member of the left-of-center Labor Party, said Sharon promised that Palestinian security forces would be allowed through Israeli blockades of towns and villages in order to make arrests overnight Wednesday.

A Sharon spokesman confirmed that the aerial bombardment that began Monday had been suspended. “There’s a lull in the operations, in order to give the Palestinian Authority another opportunity to fulfill all their obligations with regard to fighting terrorism,” spokesman Raanan Gissin said. “If we see nothing happens, we will continue our relentless fight against terrorism.”

In Washington, Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik told reporters that he hand-delivered to President Bush an appeal from Arafat for more time to prove that he is trying to stop terrorist violence.

Earlier in the day, in an interview with ABC News, Arafat also had asked Israel to give him more time to arrest militants.

“They have to cool down to give me the chance,” Arafat said when asked whether he was capable of making the arrests that Israel demands. He said his security forces had already arrested 131 militants over the preceding four days. He later told the Reuters news agency that he believes Israel is trying to oust him.

Speaking to a meeting of the parliamentary faction of his right-wing Likud Party, Sharon said he plans to intensify the assassination campaign that Israel has carried out against Palestinian militants since fighting erupted 14 months ago. He called the operations “pinpoint prevention.”

Sharon also repeated Israel’s demands, saying Arafat must make “real arrests of terrorists and those sending them,” dismantle terrorist organizations, disarm militants and hand their weapons over to the United States, prevent attacks and halt anti-Israeli incitement.

In Ankara, Turkey, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told a news conference that Arafat must, indeed, do more.

“I hope he is making a 100% effort. We have not yet seen the results of such an effort,” Powell said. “What he really has to do is show significant results. As long as bombs keep going off, as long as this kind of activity does not stop, then it will be very difficult to put in place a cease-fire leading to the resumption of confidence-building activities.”

The militant group Islamic Jihad carried out a rush-hour suicide bombing in downtown Jerusalem on Wednesday, demonstrating its ability to slip bombers through Israel’s tightened grip on Palestinian-controlled areas.

Public Security Minister Uzi Landau and Religious Affairs Minister Asher Ohana were inside the luxury hotel David’s Citadel when a Palestinian strapped with explosives blew himself up in the street outside. Five people were slightly injured by flying glass, a police spokesman said.

Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert had left a breakfast meeting at the hotel moments before. None of the officials was injured in the blast.

Speaking to reporters at the scene, Olmert said Arafat must go.

“There is no doubt in my mind that there is only one person responsible for this,” he said. “He’s a terrorist. A gang leader. A Bin Laden.”

Islamic Jihad identified the bomber as Daoud Ali Ahmed abu Sway, from the West Bank village of Irtas, near Bethlehem. Israeli military sources said the bomber was a 45-year-old father of eight.

‘Zionist’ Leaders Were Allegedly Bomb Targets

In a statement faxed to Reuters’ Beirut office, Islamic Jihad said Sway meant to attack “Zionist” leaders in the hotel but “because of special circumstances evaluated by the martyr, he decided to blow himself up outside.” Police spokesman Gil Kleiman said police investigators thought the bomber intended to board a bus.

In its statement, Islamic Jihad said the attack was “only a first and quick response to the barbaric crimes and random strikes on Gaza, Jenin and other Palestinian cities. It is a quick message to the butcher Ariel Sharon.”

The bombing added to the atmosphere of siege in Jerusalem. Roadblocks have been set up on many city streets, and police are conducting thousands of random searches of cars daily as they remain on high alert for further attacks.

The sense of the nation being on a war footing bolstered the arguments of Peres and other Labor ministers and party leaders who won the day Wednesday in a party debate over whether to leave the coalition government.

Peres revealed his contacts with Arafat after emerging from the bruising Labor Party caucus. Many of the party’s lawmakers severely criticized him for staying in the coalition after the government’s decision to break contact with the Palestinian Authority and begin a military campaign against it.

On Tuesday, Peres had led Labor’s ministers in a walkout before the Cabinet took its vote on the Palestinian Authority. Peres told confidants that Sharon had sided with right-wingers who want to destroy the 1993 Oslo peace accords that Peres, Arafat and the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shared a Nobel Prize for crafting.

But at the party caucus, Peres quickly ended a showdown between backbenchers pushing to quit the government and ministers who want to stay in it by announcing that he had no intention of resigning. He won support from party leaders who said voters would punish Labor for leaving the government in a time of crisis.

“We should, under no circumstances, quit the government on the grounds of security problems,” said Maalot Mayor Shlomo Buhbut, a party activist. If the party quits now, he said, “we will simply disappear from the political map in Israel. Israeli voters will not forgive us.”

Labor Party Sends Complaints to Sharon

In the end, Labor decided to send Sharon a letter listing its complaints and its demand that Peres be put in charge of negotiations with the Palestinians. Sharon recently appointed a retired general to head what he insists will be purely security talks with the Palestinians. Labor said it will reconsider its participation in the government Dec. 16 if its complaints aren’t addressed.

Peres’ critics say the decision to stay for now makes him a partner in what they say is Sharon’s undeclared war against the Palestinian Authority that Peres helped create.

“The Labor Party’s decision today is verification that it has lost all shame,” said Naomi Chazan, a lawmaker with the left-wing Meretz Party. “After its ministers did not see fit to participate in the vote that provided justification for any military actions Sharon takes, it is beyond the capacity of any rational person to understand what they are doing in this government.”

But for the past three months there has been a massive voter defection from the party, political pollster Rafi Smith said. That loss of support helps explain the ministers’ reluctance to bolt the government, he said.

“Labor is getting the lowest support in our polls that it’s ever gotten,” the veteran pollster said. In the last parliamentary elections, in May 1999, the party received 21.5% of the Jewish vote, Smith said. His most recent poll, conducted last week, shows the party receiving 10% of the Jewish vote if elections were held now.

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Times staff writer Robin Wright in Ankara contributed to this report.