Arafat Grabs Gun as Crisis Worsens

Dec. 4, 2000 -- For the first time since he returned from exile in 1994, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has brandished a gun in public.

Palestinian officials said Arafat’s submachine gun is usually carried by aides. He had not been seen holding it in public for years.

Arafat said he grabbed the weapon and kept it in his hand forprotection today because Jewish settlers blocked a main roadon which he was traveling in the Gaza Strip.

“The Saladin street was closed and I was compelled to hold my gun,” Arafat told reporters after stepping out of his car at his office in Gaza with the weapon in his hand.

Saladin Road links southern and northern Gaza Strip. It is under Palestinian control but is used by Jewish settlers in the Kfar Darom settlement. The Israeli army closed the road two weeks ago, although the Palestinians say this was illegal.

“As I was coming from the airport, they told me the settlers had blocked Saladin street. Is it logical they would block it without the help of the [Israeli] army?” asked Arafat

A Symbolic Gesture

It appeared that Arafat was carrying the weapon in a symbolic gesture. He gave no indication he would use it.

Israel army radio said settlers tried to throw stones atArafat’s convoy. The army would say only that it removed settlers from the roadside. More than two dozen settlers were detained, the radio said.

The gesture came as heavy gun battles raged early this morning near a shrine in the West Bank town of Bethlehem.

The Israeli army said it sent gunships into action to stop attacks on Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem, a flashpoint for violence where Jewish history says a biblical matriarch was buried.

Arafat said the Israeli shelling “was a shock because we had agreed to cool down the situation.”

The Palestinians said the fighting in Bethlehem was provoked by an incident on Sunday in which they said Israeli soldiers shot and wounded 25 people.

Fourteen Palestinians were injured in the fighting, which began Sunday and continued into the early hours today, Palestinian hospitals said.

Barak in Political Stew

The fighting in Bethlehem came after a relative downturn in the number of shooting incidents in recent days.

The escalation of violence is not expected to help Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s political standing or his chances in early elections called last week.

After only 18 months in office, Barak is hinging his hopes for re-election on a last-ditch bid to clinch a peace deal — partial or comprehensive — with the Palestinians.

Barak is being squeezed on all sides. He faces early elections he had hoped to avoid, growing public dismay over his failure to halt the violence, and a potential revolt from within his own party.

Despite his peace platform, Palestinians see Barak as expanding Jewish settlements, a thorny issue in the peace process.

Peace Now, a peace group, today released a report that said since Barak took office in May 1999, work has begun on 2,830 housing units in the settlements and tenders have been issued for 3,500 more — about the same rate as under the previous, pro-settlement government of Benjamin Netanyahu.

As the country prepares for an election that could take place as early as spring, all eyes are turned on Netanyahu.

Speaking upon his return from a lecture tour to the United States today, Netanyahu said he was close to a decision on whether to return to politics and seek his party’s backing to run again for the top office.

“I can say one thing: I think I am close to it because our situation is one that demands a decision. I will have to make a decision in the near future,” the former Likud party leader said in Tel Aviv today.

Netanyahu, 51, took a “time-out” from politics after being trounced by Barak, the 58-year-old Labor Party leader, in an election in May last year. Ariel Sharon, 72, took over Likud following Netanyahu’s defeat.

Last week, Barak had suggested quickly negotiating a phased peace plan that would recognize a Palestinian state but put off the most sensitive issues, such as control of Jerusalem.

However, the Palestinians have demanded a comprehensive agreement that creates a Palestinian state in all, or virtually all, of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip — areas Israel captured during the 1967 Mideast War.

International Inquiry

In a related development, top Barak aide and senior Israeli negotiator Gilead Sher said Sunday that Israel would cooperate fully with an international inquiry into the causes of the violence.

Israel has previously said that the fact-finding commission, agreed to at a Middl East summit in October, should not begin its work while violence was continuing and other parts of the summit agreement had not been implemented.

But Sher said that the investigating team would be welcome when it arrives in two weeks’ time.

“Israel will cooperate fully. We expect that all the terms of reference, the mandate of the commission — will be agreed upon before it begins,” Sher told Israel radio of the team led by former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell.

ABCNEWS.com’s Sue Masterman in Vienna, Austria, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.