Israel Vows to Find Way to Expel Arafat

Making its most explicit threat yet to banish Yasser Arafat from the Palestinian territories, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s government Thursday branded the Palestinian Authority president an obstacle to peace and declared that Israel would find a way to remove him.

Sharon and his security advisors, meeting in a closed-door session two days after a pair of suicide bombings killed 15 Israelis, agreed in principle that Arafat should be sent into exile but did not set a timetable, according to Israeli officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Word of the threat spread rapidly in the West Bank town of Ramallah, where Arafat has been confined to his shell-battered, rubble-strewn headquarters for nearly two years.

Honking car horns and banging pots, thousands of demonstrators -- including entire families, with children carried on their parents’ shoulders -- descended after dark on the Muqata, as Arafat’s compound is known, chanting slogans. “With our blood and souls we will defend you, Abu Amar!” they shouted, using Arafat’s nom de guerre.

Arafat, dressed in his trademark fatigues and checkered kaffiyeh, emerged from the compound’s main building, flashing the victory sign and then giving a somewhat disjointed speech.

“My brave ones, my beloved ones,” he said, alternately speaking through a bullhorn, blowing kisses and blinking in the glare of television lights and camera flashes. “This people will never bend to pressure -- we will continue the march to Jerusalem!”

In the Gaza Strip, gunmen affiliated with Arafat’s Fatah faction fired into the air, summoning crowds into the street to wave giant portraits of Arafat and denounce Israel. “Sharon, you will pay!” some shouted.

Analysts long have argued that deporting Arafat could trigger a burst of instability, not only in the Palestinian territories but also elsewhere in the Middle East.

Palestinians view the 74-year-old leader as a symbol of their decades-long struggle for statehood, and while his people sometimes resent his autocratic rule, previous Israeli moves against him have only increased his popularity.

Earlier in the day, in what Israeli security sources described as a pointed message to Arafat, reconnaissance troops took up positions in three buildings overlooking his damaged compound, while an Israeli F-16 fighter jet circled high overhead. Arafat insisted he was not worried.

“This is my homeland -- no one can kick me out,” he told journalists. “They can kill me,” he added, glancing skyward. “They have bombs.”

Israeli officials said it was decided at the security meeting to instruct the army to prepare a plan for a forced deportation. But a senior Israeli security source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that elements of such a plan were already in place and that, if given the order, the army was ready to act.

Arafat, a onetime partner in peace negotiations, is now viewed by Israel as a driving force behind nearly three years of unrelenting conflict. Israel and the United States believe the Palestinian leader has given at least tacit support to terrorist attacks by militant groups, including suicide bombings, that have killed hundreds of Israelis.

In the last several weeks, Israeli frustration has boiled over with the bloody breakdown of a unilateral truce declared by the militant groups; the resignation of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority prime minister who had been installed with Washington’s approval; and the near-total collapse of a U.S.-backed peace initiative.

U.S. and Israeli officials have tried to isolate Arafat, and his status has been a source of discord between the Bush administration and other international sponsors of the peace plan.

But Washington has consistently urged Israel to refrain from expelling him, arguing that such a step would be counterproductive.

“Our view on Mr. Arafat hasn’t changed,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. “Our view is that he is part of the problem, not part of the solution. At the same time, we think it would not be helpful to expel him because it would just give him another stage to play on.”

One Israeli official, carefully watching the language used in Washington, noted that the U.S. admonition was not particularly harsh. But a senior State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Washington had been unambiguous.

“We have made it quite clear that it would be distinctly unhelpful to move against Arafat,” the official said.

Palestinian officials appealed for U.S. protection for Arafat.

“This is a piece of escalation by Israel, and President Bush should force Israel to stop these irresponsible and provocative acts,” said Nabil abu Rudaineh, a senior advisor to Arafat.

Hours after his return from a trip to India that was shortened by the two suicide bombings, Sharon summoned his security Cabinet, consisting of senior ministers involved in defense policymaking, to weigh what measures Israel should take. The attacks, staged hours apart, were carried out by the militant group Hamas.

Heading into the talks, eight of the 11 security Cabinet members were said to favor exiling Arafat. Before the meeting, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom hinted that Israel might not seek the approval of the Bush administration if it decided to go ahead with expulsion.

“We are in a situation in which [U.S.] approval for this, if we asked for it, would be almost impossible to get,” Shalom told Israel’s army-run radio. “I think there are some instances in which we have to make choices ... that are unaffected by outside influence.”

Any operation to extricate Arafat from his headquarters and fly him to another country would be perilous.

A former intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the greatest danger would be the accidental killing of Arafat, which would make him a martyr in the eyes of his people. When Israel laid siege to his compound last year, Arafat said his greatest wish was to die a martyr to the Palestinian cause. The onetime guerrilla chieftain is known to carry a sidearm or keep one close to him at all times, and he might choose to die fighting.

Arafat’s health has been unstable in recent years. He suffered for a time from noticeable tremors of his hands and lips, which have lessened lately in his relatively rare appearances before the cameras at his headquarters. Although his tremors were characteristic of Parkinson’s disease, neither he nor his aides have acknowledged that he suffers from the illness, some symptoms of which can be controlled with drugs.

Moreover, the size and volatility of the crowds that flocked to Arafat’s defense showed that any move against him would risk harming many civilians.

Arafat made a triumphal return from exile to the Gaza Strip in July 1994, after the signing of the interim Oslo peace accords. With him came a large cadre of associates who had spent decades in exile, moving with Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization from Jordan to Lebanon to Tunisia.

During the years in which the peace process was moving forward, Arafat and his Palestinian Authority gained many of the trappings of governance -- a police force, a parliament, self-rule in the Gaza Strip, and control over the main Palestinian population centers in the West Bank.

The Palestinian intifada, or uprising, broke out in late September 2000 after failed peace talks led by then-President Clinton at Camp David. Since then, Arafat has seen his Palestinian Authority all but dissolve in a conflict that has killed more than 800 Israelis and more than 2,500 Palestinians.

Arafat and Sharon, only months apart in age, have spent much of their adult lives in each other’s gun sights. During the 1980s, Israel tried many times to assassinate Arafat while he and his PLO fighters were entrenched in Beirut.

Arafat and the PLO left Lebanon under a negotiated agreement. Sharon, who was then defense minister, said later that he was sorry he did not have Arafat killed by Israeli army snipers, in defiance of the pact.

In recent months, Sharon has served as Arafat’s chief protector, while the most senior members of Israel’s government -- Shalom, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu -- urged expulsion.

Israeli news reports Thursday quoted Mofaz as telling associates that expelling Arafat might not be enough and that Israel should consider killing him. The Jerusalem Post newspaper also said in an editorial that Israel ought to kill Arafat.

Even though Israel knows it risks elevating Arafat in the eyes of Palestinians, anger has grown in recent months along with the widespread perception that Arafat was working tirelessly to sabotage the peace plan.

Arafat quickly dismissed Israeli concessions mandated by the plan as insignificant. He repeatedly made statements aimed at feeding Palestinian resentment of Abbas for failing to win improvements in their daily lives, such as the removal of checkpoints and roadblocks.

Although confined to his headquarters, Arafat has continued to exert tremendous influence in Palestinian affairs. Before being forced out, Abbas tried unsuccessfully to get Arafat to relinquish control over the 55,000-strong Palestinian security forces, about two-thirds of whom are believed to be loyal to Arafat.

Israel could only watch in dismay as all efforts to contain Arafat seemed to fail. “Cornered, Besieged -- and in Charge,” read a headline in the Haaretz newspaper last week.

Some analysts believed that Sharon might limit himself to threatening Arafat, but others thought public sentiment might force him to act.

“In the past, most Israelis thought the complications of exiling Arafat are so risky that it was not the way to take care of the problem,” said Tamar Hermann, an analyst at Tel Aviv University. “Now it isn’t clear whether people still believe that.”

All but forgotten in the tumult was the incoming Palestinian Authority prime minister, Ahmed Korei. He had said he hoped to form a streamlined “crisis Cabinet” and have his new government sworn in. But the old guard in the PLO’s policymaking body, most of them loyal to Arafat, insisted on a full complement of ministers, and the formation of the government was delayed.

Korei, in a statement, condemned the Israeli expulsion threat. “This will destroy all chances for peace and security in the region,” he said.

Special correspondent Maher Abukhater in Ramallah and Times staff writer Paul Richter in Washington contributed to this report.