Arafat seeks election within six months
May 16, 2002

Palestinian leader Yasser Aarafat, right, kisses
Rabby Sallom, a member of the Palestinian
legislative council, after delivering a speech
to the council on Wednesday. 
 Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat wants elections held within the next six months, a top adviser said Thursday. His statement followed a reform package drafted by a Palestinian parliamentary committee aimed at overhauling the corruption-ridden Palestinian Authority.

ARAFAT’S SENIOR ADVISER, Ahmed Abdel Rahman, told The Associated Press the Palestinian leader has decided to hold presidential and parliamentary elections within six months, a shorter timeframe than suggested by the legislators. “President Arafat has set a program for reform and changes,” Abdel Rahman said. 
       “The core of the changes will be conducting general elections in a period that will not exceed four to six months,” he said, adding that Arafat has called for a meeting of the Central Elections Committee within two days.
       The last elections were held in 1996, and Arafat won overwhelmingly.   
       Hours earlier, the reform package was drafted to be presented to the full parliament early next week. As part of the package, Arafat was asked to 
disband the current Cabinet and present a new, smaller one to parliament for approval within 45 days.
       Legislators from Arafat’s Fatah movement had also demanded that the post of prime minister be created, with the prime minister in charge of day-to-day operations of the Palestinian Authority. 
However, legislators said there were legal complications in forming the new office, and said they were dropping the demand until they could work out the problems. 
       “This is the authentic, Palestinian homegrown program of reform, structural, legal, procedural, personal,” said legislator Hanan Ashrawi, in apparent reference to pressures from the United States, Europe and Israel to revamp the government.
       
SHARON’S DEMAND
       Separately, a senior adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said the Israeli leader has urged the United States and other nations to appoint an interim Palestinian government that would be in office for a year and carry out sweeping reforms. 
       Sharon proposed that the new government be established even against the Palestinians’ wishes, the Yediot Ahronot daily reported Thursday. “The free world must force this government on the Palestinians,” the daily quoted him as saying. 
The prime minister’s foreign policy adviser, Danny Ayalon, confirmed that Sharon brought up the idea of an interim Palestinian government in recent talks with foreign leaders, including senior U.S. officials. 
       Asked whether Sharon wants to see an interim government established over the objections of Arafat, Ayalon said: “It (the Palestinian Authority) certainly has to be forced out, and it doesn’t look like they are going out voluntarily.” 
       Ashrawi said Sharon’s attitude was racist and patronizing, and that his demands for Palestinian reform were a pretext for avoiding peace talks. “Palestinian reform is not the business of Sharon,” she said. 
       
RAID NEAR RAMALLAH
       Meantime, Israeli undercover troops killed Ahmed Ghanam, 25, a member of the Palestinian Preventive Security Service after a raid into Beitunia, a suburb of Ramallah, before dawn Thursday.
       Israel ended its six-week military offensive against Palestinian militias in the West Bank last week, but has continued carrying out arrest raids.
       Israel launched the operation in response to a March 27 suicide bombing in a seaside hotel in which 29 Israelis were killed during a Passover Seder, the ritual meal ushering in the weeklong Jewish holiday.
       Israeli newspapers reported Thursday that the bomber was disguised as a woman. The Yediot Ahronot and Haaretz dailies said Abbas al-Sayad, the commander of the Hamas military wing in the West Bank city of Tulkarem who was arrested last week, admitted he was the mastermind. 
       The bomber, Abdel Bassat Odeh, disguised himself as a woman, shaving his beard, putting on make-up and a long-haired wig and wearing high-heel shoes, Al-Sayad reportedly told interrogators. 

LABOR PEACE PLAN
       Meantime, Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer faced sharp criticism over a peace plan he presented to a Labor Party conference. Ben-Eliezer wants to run as Labor’s candidate for prime minister in November 2003 elections.
       The defense minister said he backed the creation of a Palestinian state in Gaza and virtually all of the West Bank.
       More controversially, Ben-Eliezer said he was willing to divide Jerusalem as part of a peace deal, with Israel giving up Arab neighborhoods in the city. 

       The minister also said he was ready to drop Israel’s claim of sovereignty over Judaism’s holiest shrine, the Temple Mount, site of biblical Jewish temples and revered by Muslims as the Haram as-Sharif, the spot where tradition says Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven.
       It was the most far-reaching proposal yet by a senior Israeli official regarding Jerusalem. The deal offered to the Palestinians in July 2000 by then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak of Labor was similar to what Ben-Eliezer outlined Wednesday, but Barak stopped short of giving up sovereignty over the Temple Mount.
       Ben-Eliezer’s rival for party leadership, legislator Haim Ramon, said Thursday that the defense minister made a “dramatic mistake” in going into detail on Jerusalem, arguing that it would be seen by the Palestinians as an opening position in future talks, and force Israel to make further concessions.
       Ramon advocates “unilateral separation” — an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and most of the West Bank, without waiting for a negotiated deal. After 20 months of Israeli-Palestinian fighting, the idea is gaining popularity, with many Israelis increasingly open to quick solutions that would restore calm.

OTHER DEVELOPMENTS
       CIA Director George Tenet may bring Israeli and Palestinian security experts to Washington for talks on curbing terror, a U.S. official says. Tenet has been expected to go to the Middle East to try to revamp a Palestinian security operation that failed to curb terror attacks on Israel, and the official said that remains under consideration.
       Switching security talks to Washington, however, could make it easier for the Bush administration to apply pressure for a radical overhaul in the security situation, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
 The legal status of 13 exiled Palestinian militants remained in limbo Thursday, as the European Union haggled over conditions for them to enter. The militants, who were allowed by Israel to go into exile, are staying temporarily under heavy guard at a hotel in Cyprus after spending nearly 40 days in Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity surrounded by Israeli forces. 
 Israelis trust Sharon far more than they do his right-wing rival Benjamin Netanyahu, an opinion poll for the country’s biggest newspaper said on Thursday. The Dahaf poll for the daily Yedioth Ahronoth showed Sharon maintaining the popularity he has boosted with a tough military response to a 19-month-old Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation.
 The international media rights watchdog Reporters Without Borders has demanded the release of five Palestinian journalists held by Israel including Reuters cameraman Jussry al-Jamal. “Some of them have been detained for nearly a month without being charged with any offence and one is held in an unknown place, which is unacceptable,” RSF, which is based in Paris, said in a statement issued late on Wednesday.