Global Policy Forum

By Doug Struck

A divided Israeli cabinet agreed today after a personal appeal by President Bush to accept a U.S. plan to lift the siege of Yasser Arafat's battered headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah and allow the Palestinian leader to travel freely. The plan, which Arafat agreed to later in the day, could end a month-long standoff that had the potential to throw the Middle East into even greater turmoil.

The cabinet also voted to bar a U.N. fact-finding commission into possible human rights violations during Israel's military incursion into the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank. Israeli officials said the government still had a number of objections to the composition and mission of the U.N. team. But they also acknowledged that the long history of hostility between the United Nations and Israel contributed to their suspicions.

The U.N. Security Council held an emergency meeting in New York to discuss the situation. The U.S. plan on Arafat, outlined in a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon from Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, calls for Israeli tanks to withdraw from Arafat's compound once six wanted Palestinians are taken to a Palestinian jail under U.S. and British guard.

Bush, at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., applauded the Israeli agreement as "constructive and helpful." He invited Sharon to meet him next week and issued a statement demanding that Arafat "must perform" in combating violence. But in Israel, criticism of the cabinet vote came quickly. "The policy of isolating Arafat has failed. The only one who benefited was Yasser Arafat," said Ron Ben-Yishai, a commentator for Israel's Channel One Television.

The Israeli cabinet decision was reached only after extraordinary lobbying by the Bush administration, which has come under mounting Arab and international criticism for failing to intervene more forcefully in the Middle East crisis.

Top aides to Sharon and Israeli news media said that Bush phoned Sharon on Saturday night and today, as did Powell and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.

But cabinet ministers from Sharon's right-wing Likud party strongly opposed the prospect of relinquishing Israeli control over Arafat. At lunchtime, a preliminary vote on accepting the U.S. plan was tied 13 to 13, according to a top aide. Bush made a call to Sharon arguing the case and extending the invitation to Washington, according to reports here.

Returning to the meeting, Sharon made what Israel Radio called an "impassioned plea" for accepting the U.S. plan, arguing that Israel could not afford to antagonize Bush while it was fighting with the United Nations. The final vote of the cabinet, a coalition of Likud, Labor Party members and others, was 17 to 9. "If Sharon has to fight with the United Nations or the American administration, there's no question he will choose to fight the U.N.," said a top Israeli government official, who asked not to be identified.

"We know the American game is the only one in town," he said, and Israelis are wary of losing the support of the United States. "Those prime ministers who fought against America lost their elections. Sharon is not an idiot. He understands the relationship." But Sharon has recently defied repeated requests by Bush that Israeli forces be pulled back from the West Bank.

[Early Monday, dozens of Israeli tanks and armored vehicles entered the West Bank city of Hebron, news services reported. The incursion was accompanied by attack helicopters firing machine guns. Witnesses and Palestinian security sources said seven Palestinians were killed and at least 15 people were wounded by gunfire, mostly from the helicopters.

[The Israeli military said the incursion would be "for a limited time" and was in response to the "cruel massacre carried out Saturday morning" at the nearby settlement of Adora, where Palestinian infiltrators killed four people, including a 5-year-old girl. The Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, claimed responsibility for the attack on the settlement, and the Palestinians sources said a Hamas leader in Hebron was arrested Monday.]

Israeli government officials would not publicly say whether Bush promised to help Israel persuade U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan address Israeli objections to the Jenin inspection team. "Wait to see if America changes its vote in the Security Council," the top aide said.

U.S. and British diplomats presented the U.S. plan to Arafat in Ramallah tonight. The deal could end -- as early as Tuesday -- his confinement to two cramped floors of his offices in the Palestinian-ruled city on Jerusalem's northern edge. Israeli soldiers have ringed his offices, sporadically cutting off water and electricity, since tanks rolled into the West Bank on March 29 to try to stop suicide bombings and other attacks on Israelis by Palestinian militants. The troops have largely withdrawn from most Palestinian-ruled areas, but have remained in Ramallah and Bethlehem.

In the past few days, according to telephone conversations with those inside Arafat's headquarters, Israel has begun destroying the interiors of other buildings in the compound, and has crushed dozens of official vehicles parked outside. "We think maybe they are on their way out. They want to do a scorched-earth policy as they leave. It's really spiteful," said Kevin Skvorak, 39, a New York peace activist who is among about 30 in Arafat's headquarters.

Under the deal, Arafat must imprison six men wanted by Israel in a "remote" Palestinian location until their legal status is determined. The U.S. and British civilian jailers are expected to arrive in Israel on Monday, according to Saeb Erekat, an aide to Arafat. The details of where, or how, they will oversee the imprisonment of the wanted men are to be worked out with the Palestinian Authority.

One of the men is a close aide to Arafat; another is the leader of a Palestinian faction. Four others were sentenced to terms ranging from one to 18 years by a makeshift court in Arafat's headquarters last week for their involvement in the October slaying of right-wing Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi. He was killed in retaliation for Israel's acknowledged assassination of the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

Israel's demand for Zeevi's killers has become a sticky diplomatic and legal issue. The Palestinians had arrested three of the suspects in Nablus, and transferred them with U.S. and Israeli agreement through Israeli lines to Ramallah to be tried, following 1995 agreements with Israel, according to Palestinian officials here.

Palestinians say the prosecution was being prepared, and formal papers for a trial were filed. Israel said the Palestinians did not move fast enough, and demanded the suspects be turned over to Israel. Bush publicly supported that demand, putting his officials here in an awkward position. An Israeli spokesman said the U.S. plan does not end Israel's demand that the four be extradited.

More problematic are the two other Palestinians identified in the U.S. plan; both are sought by Israel but neither has been charged. They are PFLP leader Ahmed Saadat and Palestinian Authority financial chief Fuad Shubaki, who is accused by Israel of having organized a shipment of weapons from Iran to the Palestinian Authority.

Although the custody arrangement may be distasteful for Arafat, the deal represents a rebuff to Sharon, who had publicly sought to have Arafat exiled, jailed or permanently restricted -- and bemoaned the fact that Arafat had not been killed during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Arafat's popularity among Palestinians has soared during his confinement.

The presence of the U.S. and British personnel is intended to satisfy Israel's complaints that arrested Palestinians go through a "revolving door" and are quickly released. The 1998 Wye River agreement called for CIA monitoring of Palestinian prisoners, but the arrangement did not work. The U.S. involvement will be controversial in Israel, which has fiercely resisted international involvement in its dispute with the Palestinians.

Although there is no public mention in the U.S. deal of ending the standoff at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, Palestinians have sought to link resolution of the two sieges.

Negotiators in Bethlehem met for 4 1/2 hours today, but failed to resolve the impasse involving about 200 Palestinians, some of them armed, who have been in the church for nearly four weeks. An Israeli military spokeswoman said there were "new ideas" on the table and negotiations were "constructive."

Salah Taamari, a chief Palestinian negotiator, warned that "the people in the church are hungry. They have no food. It's a tense situation where the whole situation can turn into a tragedy." In a brief news conference in Texas, Bush said of the Bethlehem situation, "I believe we are making good progress about ending that part of the Israeli incursion."

Following the Israeli cabinet meeting, ministers went on the offensive against the planned U.N. mission to Jenin.

"This awful United Nations committee is out to get us and is likely to smear Israel and to force us to do things which Israel is not prepared even to hear about, such as interrogating soldiers and officers who took part in the fighting," said Communications Minister Reuven Rivlin, a confidant of Sharon and a member of his Likud party.

One of Israel's principal concerns is that it be able to screen witnesses summoned by the commission, to veto any that it prefer not testify and to ensure that witnesses who want to testify have the chance to do so. Officials said Israel also wanted to preserve the right to withhold certain documents from the fact-finding team's scrutiny.

"The U.N. is talking about absolute capability to get whatever documents or persons they want," said a Foreign Ministry official. "Do they really expect we would disclose war plans or secret communications between commanders or things that are of a security nature without screening it?" Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, who supports allowing the U.N. team into the country, told Israel Radio: "Israel will determine who will testify on its behalf. That is the central point."

One Israeli Foreign Ministry official said Israel was particularly concerned that witnesses not be identified so they are not liable for prosecution in Belgium, where the law permits war crimes prosecutions of foreigners. Last year, Sharon was sued for war crimes in Belgium by Palestinian survivors of a 1982 massacre in a Beirut refugee camp that took place under Sharon's auspices, they alleged. The case stalled, but left Israeli legal experts wary of further attempts to prosecute Israelis in Belgium.

More broadly, Israel is concerned that the team not draw conclusions that might lay the groundwork for litigation. Some officials have said they were particularly concerned, for instance, that the U.N. team might conclude that the army had violated the Fourth Geneva Convention by preventing ambulances from reaching the Jenin camp.

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