PALESTINIAN: Confusion surrounds plans for imminent Palestinian elections, after the Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat yesterday indicated elections were conditional on the end of Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and his aides promptly asserted that he hadn't meant what he said,David Horovitz, in Jerusalem
Speaking to reporters in Ramallah, Mr Arafat was unequivocal. Voting would take place "as soon as we will finish this occupation of our land," he said, and "definitely not" before then.
However, this stance directly contradicted his aides' promises this week, and underlined the tension in the Palestinian leadership and Mr Arafat's efforts to manoeuvre amid domestic and international pressure for far-reaching reforms.
His aides had said that elections for Mr Arafat's post and for the 88-seat Palestinian Legislative Council would take place within four to six months.
Mr Muhammad Rashid, a key adviser to Mr Arafat, has assured Bush Administration officials that dramatic reforms are imminent, including a streamlining of Mr Arafat's array of security forces into a more efficient unit. And a political scientist, Dr Abdel Sattar Qassem, has become the first candidate to announce that he will stand against Mr Arafat.
One of Mr Arafat's ministers, Mr Nabil Sha'ath, insisted yesterday that all such plans remained unchanged, that the 1.6 million-name electoral register was already being compiled, and that the Palestinian leader had not been demanding a full cessation of the occupation as a precondition for the first elections since 1996, but rather an Israeli withdrawal to the positions held by the army 20 months ago, before the start of the intifada.
Even this precondition, however, would likely prove problematic, to put it mildly. Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, has stressed he does not believe the Palestinian Authority is trying to thwart suicide bombings, and thus is reserving the right to send troops deep into Arafat-controlled areas.
Yesterday, for example, troops re-entered the Jenin refugee camp and reportedly made 30 arrests. They also blasted the home of a local Hamas leader after ordering his family to leave the building. The Hamas leader, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, said yesterday that suicide bombings would go on, and denied he had been pressured by Saudi Arabia to halt them.
Soldiers also entered the cities of Jenin and Nablus, accidentally killing a seven-year-old boy in an adjacent refugee camp when firing at stone-throwers, Palestinian witnesses said.
In other violence yesterday, Israeli troops shot dead an Israeli Arab woman in her car when, the army said, it sped towards them on a West Bank road. In the Gaza Strip, a member of the al-Aqsa Brigade, affiliated with Mr Arafat's Fatah faction, was killed by troops in an exchange of fire when he tried to infiltrate a settlement, the army said.
A major army incursion into Gaza is said by the incoming chief of staff, Gen Moshe Ya'alon, to be "only a matter of time". Mr Sharon's relentless efforts to delegitimise Mr Arafat have not been accepted by the US State Department.
Its latest report to Congress on PLO compliance with the Oslo peace accords, covering the second half of last year, said there was "no clear evidence" that Mr Arafat or his top officials initiated or sanctioned terrorist attacks in that period.
However, the report did blame Mr Arafat's regime for having "tolerated an atmosphere that promoted or supported the use of violence" and said terrorists were going unpunished.