Ousting Arafat Fraught With Risk for Israel

Israel has declared its intent to “remove” Yasser Arafat, but making good on the threat to oust the Palestinian Authority leader is a gamble replete with political, diplomatic and tactical risks, analysts said Friday.

Although Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s government has not said how or when Arafat’s departure from the Palestinian territories might be achieved, the strategy has raised a host of complex questions: Would he even survive an attempt to eject him? If he was exiled, might Arafat not wield even more power from abroad? Would anyone dare come forward as his successor?

Israel would undoubtedly run into a barrage of international criticism if it expelled or physically harmed the 74-year-old Palestinian Authority president. A day after Sharon’s government branded Arafat an obstacle to peace and announced its plan to oust him, sharp admonitions began pouring in from around the world, including the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia -- the four sponsors of the Mideast peace plan known as the “road map.”

In a rare show of unity on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the U.N. Security Council issued a statement Friday saying that the removal of Arafat would be “unhelpful and should not be implemented.”

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell called his Israeli counterpart, Silvan Shalom, to warn against rash action and phoned Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath to express American opposition to Arafat’s expulsion. White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, speaking to reporters en route to Ft. Stewart, Ga., said, “We don’t view that [expelling Arafat] would help matters, and it would only serve to give him a broader stage.”

Indeed, the threat’s immediate effect was to boost Arafat’s standing among Palestinians, many of whom regard him as the personification of their struggle for statehood.

“The decision restored the blush to Arafat’s cheeks,” political commentator Roni Shaked wrote in Israel’s largest-circulation newspaper, Yediot Aharonot. “The security Cabinet’s decision restored the man to center stage, to the spotlight -- and this time, with a lot more power.”

Thousands of Palestinians took to the streets Friday in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to shout their support for their elected president, whom some protesters pledged to protect with their lives.

Meanwhile, Israeli police were called to quell a disturbance at Judaism’s holiest site, the Western Wall in Jerusalem, where authorities said Palestinians protesting Israel’s declaration about Arafat hurled rocks at Jewish worshipers from above on the sacred plaza known to Jews as the Temple Mount and Muslims as Haram al Sharif.

Police stormed the plaza, using stun grenades and tear gas to disperse those involved in the melee, which Jerusalem’s police chief accused Arafat of engineering.

On Friday, Israeli government officials defended their decision to seek Arafat’s ouster.

“Has the world turned on its head?” Shalom, the foreign minister, asked after fielding a flood of calls demanding that Israel lay off Arafat. “If the whole world should be phoning anybody, it should be phoning the Palestinians.”

Before a hastily planned meeting with U.S. Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer, Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz reiterated that his government believes it is necessary to expel Arafat and said Israel had made a “historic mistake” in not doing it earlier.

How Israel may accomplish the task is unclear, although reports suggest that the military has a plan in place if Sharon gives the green light.

With its superior firepower, Israel could send in soldiers to swoop down on Arafat’s half-demolished compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah, pluck him from the rooms he has not left in nearly two years and fly him out in a helicopter.

But such a raid runs the risk of causing or contributing to Arafat’s death, whether in a shootout or by his own hand with the gun he is said to carry, thus making him a “martyr.”

His death would seem certain to spark riots and raise an international outcry. But the Israeli government views itself as locked in a battle to the death with terrorism and accuses Arafat of having a hand in it.

Unlike previous governments, Sharon’s administration has not balked at going after other leading Palestinian figures such as Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual head of the extremist group Hamas, who narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in Gaza City last week.

Acknowledging the risks inherent in trying to forcibly deport Arafat, Israeli Housing Minister Effi Eitam said: “He is not going to give himself up.... The very decision to capture Arafat means the willingness to assume responsibility for his death by one way or another.”

Chances of an imminent Israeli raid seemed to lessen Friday when troops pulled out of buildings next to Arafat’s compound that they occupied a day earlier.

It is unclear how many countries would be willing to take in Arafat, who is viewed as a potentially destabilizing force in many Arab capitals, despite their support of his cause. The only leader to raise his hand so far was Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who told an Italian newspaper that he would receive Arafat “with open arms.”

Uzi Arad, a former senior official with the Israeli foreign intelligence agency, Mossad, said that a preferable alternative to driving Arafat out would be to work with countries such as Egypt to persuade the Palestinian leader to go into exile voluntarily.

“This is not something that can be done overnight, in a sloppy way,” Arad said. “Suppose we told Arafat, ‘Look, you’re like an American president, and your term is up, so leave graciously. You’ll have a nice stipend, you can take your loyalists with you, you’ll have a nice villa in Cairo....’ Much as I think he was a bad leader for the Palestinians and all concerned, it’s in [Israel’s] interest to give him an offer that doesn’t humiliate him or the Palestinian people.”

Arafat, however, has vowed that he would not be banished, let alone go voluntarily. “This is my homeland -- no one can kick me out,” he said Thursday in Ramallah. “They can kill me.”

Even if he is forcibly exiled, it is unlikely that Israel can ensure that he stays out of Palestinian affairs. Arafat had led the Palestinian struggle for statehood from exile in the Tunisian capital before his return to the Gaza Strip in 1994.

“Arafat was an effective opponent when he was outside the territories, in Tunis,” said Shai Feldman, a political analyst at Tel Aviv University. “I don’t see how removing him to a situation he has already mastered in the past is going to improve the situation.”

Another option is to put Arafat under strict house arrest in Ramallah, cutting off his telephone and preventing visitors from seeing him. Arafat has been holed up in his compound, fearing that if he leaves, Israel will prevent his return.

Although the U.S. and Israel have already tried to ignore him for more than a year, most other countries still acknowledge Arafat as the Palestinians’ legitimately elected leader. The EU envoy, for example, has met with him regularly despite American and Israeli displeasure.

Israeli authorities have previously tried to cut off Arafat’s contact with the outside world but relented under international pressure. However, Sharon’s government may show keener resolve now because of what officials perceive as greater public support to deal harshly with Arafat in the wake of two suicide bombings Tuesday that killed 15 people and an even deadlier attack aboard a Jerusalem bus on Aug. 19, which killed more than 20 people.

In a poll published in Friday’s Yediot Aharonot, more than a third of respondents advocated killing Arafat, an indication that a once-fringe position has almost gone mainstream. Sharon has publicly expressed regret at not having assassinated Arafat, and in an editorial Thursday, the right-wing Jerusalem Post called for Arafat to be killed.

However, 44% of those surveyed supported less drastic measures, such as expelling or isolating him. And although part of the government’s argument for getting rid of Arafat was that it would reduce terrorist attacks, poll participants expressed deep skepticism that this would work: More than two-thirds said that banishing Arafat would not change -- and could even increase -- the frequency of such violence.

If Arafat is ousted, the Israeli government hopes the way would be cleared for alternative, more moderate, Palestinian leaders to emerge from his shadow. But given Arafat’s enduring popularity among his people, some analysts feared that banishing him would have exactly the opposite effect, making it impossible for anyone to come forward as a successor without being vilified as a turncoat.

“It’s going to create a situation in which no Palestinian leader

“I can understand the anger” behind the Israeli government’s resolution, Feldman said. “But anger can’t replace the need for sound strategy.... The fact on the ground is that Arafat remains the Palestinian leader who can most deliver.”

Times staff writers Maggie Farley at the United Nations and Maura Reynolds in Ft. Stewart contributed to this report.