THE MIDDLE EAST: An Israeli court yesterday convicted Marwan Barghouti, a self-styled principal orchestrator of the Palestinian intifada, of involvement in the killings of five Israelis, and judges said he had sometimes ordered attacks "based on instructions" from Mr Yasser Arafat. David Horovitz in Jerusalem reports
The Israeli Justice Minister said after the ruling that Israel "might have to put Arafat on trial one of these days." Barghouti's conviction drew an immediate threat from Palestinian extremists to kidnap Israelis in order to win his release, further ratcheting up tensions amid one of the bloodiest periods in the 3½-year uprising.
Israeli forces are continuing their large-scale military operations in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah, where the deaths of six Palestinians yesterday, three or more of them gunmen, brought to some 40 the number killed in the last three days.
Two more Palestinians - one a Hamas leader and the other a 13-year-old boy - were shot in separate incidents in the West Bank; the boy was hit when Israeli troops fired on a group of youths throwing petrol-bombs.
For a second day, hundreds of Israeli left-wingers protested the Rafah military activity and the ongoing presence in Gaza at demonstrations outside the Defence Ministry in Tel Aviv and the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem.
Defying a United Nations call for an end to the violence and international criticism that has included behind-the-scenes phone calls from American officials, Israeli military sources indicated that the Rafah operation was not yet ending, and that soldiers were still searching for tunnels through which Hamas and other Palestinian groups smuggle in weaponry from adjacent Egyptian territory.
Israeli troops, who have been searching house to house for wanted men and weaponry, have also made 70 arrests in Rafah this week.
Handcuffed hands clasped above his head in victory gestures, Barghouti, who insists he is a political leader, declared in a Tel Aviv court: "So long as occupation continues, the Intifada will not stop."
He said he called on the Israeli public: "Don't believe for one moment that you can overcome the Palestinians with force. Palestinians have no power, but they have justice on their side."
Second in popularity only to Mr Arafat, Barghouti is seen by many Palestinians as a potential presidential successor and had been regarded as a relative moderate by Israel before the outbreak of this conflict in 2000.
But he was captured by Israeli forces two years ago and accused by Israeli authorities of heading the Arafat-affiliated Tanzim and al-Aksa Martyrs' Brigades that have carried out numerous shootings and suicide bombings.
In their ruling yesterday the three-judge panel found Barghouti guilty of providing training, equipment and funding for the killers of five people in three separate incidents: the shooting of a Greek Orthodox monk on a West Bank road in 2001; the killing of an Israeli woman at a petrol station outside Jerusalem in 2002; and the shooting of three Israelis in a Tel Aviv restaurant the same year.
State prosecutors expressed disappointment that the judges acquitted Barghouti of involvement in more than 20 other murders for which he had been indicted, ruling that his direct role in these deaths could not be established. The state is seeking five life sentences.
Mr Jawal Boulous, a lawyer for Barghouti, said he fully expected the court would jail his client for the five life terms when it convenes for sentencing on June 6th. He said there would be no appeal since his client did not recognise the legitimacy of the Israeli court.