Critic of Arafat wounded in shooting

By Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson
Knight Ridder Newspapers

JAMAL ARURI / AFP/GETTY IMAGES Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat listens to an adviser, Dr. Yussef Abdullah, during a meeting with Cabinet members yesterday.

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An investigation was begun into suspicions that the shooting was politically motivated, possibly as a warning to Arafat critics who have been emboldened by anti-Arafat street protests in the Gaza Strip. The wounds were not considered serious.

The crisis has been brewing since late last week, when Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia submitted his resignation in frustration over the breakdown of authority in Gaza and discontent over the disorder within Palestinian security services.

If he resigns and the government falls after less than a year in office, that would be a setback for Arafat, who wants to show some movement toward establishing democratic institutions in the Palestinian territories.

Israel and the United States refuse to deal with Arafat. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon says the lack of a Palestinian negotiating partner was one reason for his decision to unilaterally withdraw from the Gaza Strip next year. He has not met Qureia since his becoming Palestinian premier.

Israel has confined Arafat in his Ramallah office building for more than two years. Most other buildings in his compound were destroyed in Israeli attacks and raids. Palestinians largely consider Arafat their main symbol of struggle and independence, though many disagree with his latest moves.

Qadoura Fares, a minister without portfolio, said Qureia told Arafat that his government must have real authority, especially over the security branches, in order for it to be effective.

Qureia yesterday grudgingly gave in to Arafat's demand that he stay in his post, briefly easing the political crisis.

But the tension between the two remained, with Qureia describing his status as a "caretaker government" and that his plan to resign would stand unless Arafat ceded control over Palestinian security services, a step that Qureia said was needed to restore law and order in the Gaza Strip.

It is the strongest challenge yet to Arafat's authority. A younger generation is battling to take power from the aging leader's old guard as Israel prepares to withdraw settlers and soldiers from predominantly Palestinian Gaza by the end of 2005.

Palestinian Labor Minister Ghassan Khatib complained that the fighting among Palestinians was obscuring the real threat to the Palestinian Authority: Israel's military clampdown on Palestinian territories and the economic privation that's threatening 4 million Palestinians. "This [crisis] is like a competition between people who want to control a prison," he said last night.
 
Tension has been building in Gaza since December, when Sharon pledged to withdraw the Israeli army and vacate Jewish settlements without coordinating with Palestinian authorities — leaving a Palestinian power vacuum and setting competing forces against each other.

Since Friday, Gaza has been beset by kidnappings, demonstrations and attacks on Palestinian Authority security compounds in the name of ending widespread government corruption. Arafat tried defusing the situation Saturday by firing a widely hated police chief and placing a widely disliked relative of his, Moussa Arafat, into the top Palestinian security post.

That prompted even wilder unrest and cries of cronyism that forced him to return his relative to a lesser post two days later.

On Monday, Arafat reinstated the officer his relative had replaced — Abdel Razek al-Majaide — but retained Moussa Arafat in a powerful position, satisfying some of his critics but infuriating others.

The United States and other Mideast peace sponsors have urged a streamlining of the security services under the authority of the Cabinet as a prerequisite for reviving peace negotiations.

In related developments

Israeli soldiers clashed with Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas along the border yesterday, leaving two soldiers and one guerrilla dead. The fighting was the most serious since May, when Hezbollah killed an Israeli soldier and wounded five others in a disputed area elsewhere on the border. Monday, a bomb in Beirut killed a senior Hezbollah member, Ghalib Awali. Hezbollah accused Israel, which assassinated Hezbollah leader Abbas al-Mussawi in 1992, of carrying out the attack. Israel declined comment.

The U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly adopted a resolution yesterday demanding that Israel comply with a world-court decision and tear down the barrier it is building to seal off the West Bank. A defiant Israel vowed to continue construction.

The 150-6 vote was opposed by Israel and the United States, which argued that the resolution was unbalanced. Ten countries abstained. The four other countries that opposed the resolution were Australia, Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau.

The assembly's vote, like the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice, is not legally binding.