THE MIDDLE EAST: The Palestinian Authority's Information Minister, Mr Yasser Abed-Rabbo, acknowledged yesterday the authority was losing control to militant groups in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This was a consequence of Israel's policy of isolating individual cities and restricting PA President Yasser Arafat to Ramallah.
The authority's hold is "diminishing," Mr Abed-Rabbo said. "This was the target of (Israeli Prime Minister) Ariel Sharon." Mr Abed-Rabbo was confirming widely-held assessments that, while Mr Arafat himself has actually gained popularity as a consequence of Mr Sharon's recent personalising of the intifada conflict, Palestinian extremist groups are becoming increasingly daring.
In a sign of Mr Arafat's collapsing rule, gunmen last week killed three convicts inside a PA courthouse. Palestinian protesters have also forced the release of prisoners, including Islamic extremists suspected of orchestrating suicide bombings, from PA jails on several occasions in recent days.
Mr Arafat yesterday reportedly castigated his West Bank security chief, Mr Jibril Rajoub, about this issue and over a failed effort to rein in gunmen from Mr Arafat's own Fatah faction of the PLO. He even waved his pistol in Mr Rajoub's face, according to some reports. There were also suggestions that Mr Arafat's moderate Jerusalem representative, Mr Sari Nusseibeh, was resigning in protest at Mr Arafat's failure to endorse his calls for compromise on the refugee issue; Mr Nusseibeh's office issued a denial.
Mr Sharon has said he considers Mr Arafat to be "irrelevant" and has sought to foster contacts with other senior PA figures instead. However, any hope that this would lead to a fall-off in intifada conflict is proving groundless.
And the US administration is not endorsing the boycott of Mr Arafat, sending a diplomat to meet with him on Monday, and that same day criticising Israel for carrying out air attacks on Palestinian targets "in areas that are heavily populated by civilians".
Palestinian officials have urged active US intervention to stop such raids.
Mr Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, the Israeli Defence Minister, confirmed yesterday that Israel is ready to carve out "security zones" in the West Bank and Gaza, to try to thwart a Hamas threat to fire Kassam missiles at Israeli cities. Two Kassams landed harmlessly inside Israel on Sunday.
Establishing such zones would represent a major escalation of the confrontation.
During what it called an "anti-terror operation" outside Hebron yesterday, Israeli troops killed a man they said had opened fire on them; Palestinian officials said he was a policeman and was fleeing a checkpoint.