Arafat Asks Militants to Restore Truce

Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat called on militant groups Wednesday to reinstate a shattered cease-fire and pledged to crack down on armed Palestinian factions -- but only if Israel stopped hunting down their leaders.

The Israeli government immediately dismissed Arafat’s offer as a sham, and even a senior official of the radical Muslim organization Hamas warned the Palestinian Authority leader to back off from challenging the various militia groups.

Still, it was Arafat’s first public call for action after the spiraling violence of the last two weeks, which saw a Palestinian suicide bomber kill 21 passengers on a bus and Israeli attack helicopters launch missile strikes on Hamas operatives.

From his battered compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Arafat urged “all political factions and forces to recommit themselves to national unity and solidarity to protect our people and to commit themselves to the hudna” -- the Arabic term for the temporary truce that the main militant organizations declared June 29 and formally abandoned last Thursday.

Arafat also called on the United States to intervene in order to get the peace plan known as the “road map” back on track. The ambitious U.S.-backed initiative envisions an independent Palestinian state, but that has yet to get off the ground. So far, neither the Israeli nor the Palestinian side has been willing to make the concessions demanded by the plan.

Arafat’s public statement echoed similar calls by senior Palestinian officials for a restoration of the hudna.

His remarks provided a rare show of accord, at least outwardly, between him and the government of his appointed prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, whose authority Arafat has been accused of trying to undermine.

Abbas is perceived as a moderate willing to try to rein in militants, but analysts say that he has been continually thwarted by Arafat’s refusal to relinquish control of most of the Palestinian security forces.

In recent days, Arafat has tried to shore up his power base by naming to security positions loyalists who would in effect sideline Abbas’ minister for security, Mohammed Dahlan.

Under increasing heat from the power struggle with Arafat, and from militant factions that view his diplomatic engagement with Israel as treasonous, Abbas convened a meeting of his Cabinet in Gaza City on Wednesday to discuss the recent turn of events.

Aides said the prime minister did not meet with leaders of militant groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Abbas is scheduled to present a report of his first 100 days in office to Palestinian legislators on Monday, a gathering that some fear could turn into a public dressing-down of the prime minister.

Many on the Palestinian street have demanded Abbas’ resignation, saying that his cooperation with Israel and the U.S. has earned nothing in return but Israeli raids in the West Bank and “targeted killings” in the Gaza Strip.

Abdulaziz Rantisi, a co-founder of Hamas, warned that any exhortation from the Palestinian Authority, whether by Arafat or Abbas, to clamp down on militant groups was “a very dangerous call.”

The Israeli government also poured scorn on Arafat’s comments and declared that it would continue pursuing extremists because the Palestinians had refused to, even after last week’s suicide bombing in Jerusalem, one of the worst such attacks in nearly three years of conflict.

The Palestinian Authority “has not even started to do what is expected of it against the terror infrastructure, and thus we have no choice but to do the job” ourselves, Israeli radio quoted Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz as saying.

Senior Israeli officials also said that the Jewish state would not have dealings with any government controlled by Arafat if he were to muscle Abbas aside. The U.S. and Israel have both made a point of trying to marginalize Arafat for the last year, but he remains the ultimate arbiter of Palestinian politics -- a point that U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell tacitly acknowledged last week in an unusual appeal to Arafat to help Abbas restrain the armed factions.

There was more bloodshed Wednesday when Israeli troops fatally shot a Palestinian man whom the military accused of trying to stab a soldier at the Jewish shrine known as Rachel’s Tomb, on the edge of the West Bank city of Bethlehem, near Jerusalem.

Israeli soldiers also arrested about a dozen suspected members of the radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, who were meeting in Ramallah to mark the second anniversary of the killing by Israel of one of the group’s leaders.