MIDDLE EAST: Moving with alacrity, Palestinian politicians voted yesterday to hold new elections.
They want an election for Mr Yasser Arafat's position as president of the Palestinian Authority by next March, and to dissolve and re-elect their own 88-seat Legislative Council within a year.
The proposals were drafted just a day after Mr Arafat told the quasi-parliament he was ready for new elections and speedy reforms in the authority. The question now is whether Mr Arafat will approve them.
The legislators, meeting simultaneously in Gaza and Ramallah and communicating by video-phone, also resolved that Mr Arafat should disband the authority's cabinet and name a new, more efficient 19-member ministerial team, one of whom would be placed in charge of the Palestinian Authority's sprawling and bewildering array of security apparatuses - hitherto a key source of Mr Arafat's power.
"This is the authentic, Palestinian homegrown programme of reform - structural, legal, procedural, personal," said Dr Hanan Ashrawi, a PLC member who helped draft the proposals.
Her use of the word "authentic" was apparently designed to distance the plans from Israeli demands for "reform" that essentially amount to a call for the ousting of Mr Arafat.
Mr Arafat and the PLC were elected in 1996, and new elections were to be held in late spring of 1999 - to coincide with what the architects of the collapsed Oslo peace process had hoped would be the successful conclusion of negotiations on a permanent Israeli-Palestinian accord and the establishment of Palestine.
The failure of that process also, incidentally, saw the cancellation of election plans. Elected in 1996 by a 9-1 majority over a single competitor, an elderly Ramallah social worker, Mr Arafat would presumably prevail again in any new vote, but the legislators' proposals, as taking shape yesterday, are designed to ensure a far greater delegation of authority and wider checks and balances.
"President Arafat will stay the president and the symbol of our authority," said Mr Hatem Abdel Khader, a member of the Legislative Council from Mr Arafat's own Fatah faction, "but he has to distribute some of his responsibilities".
An aide to Mr Ariel Sharon acknowledged yesterday that the Israeli prime minister is now openly pressing world leaders, and most especially President Bush, to force out Mr Arafat, consign him to a symbolic role and impose "an interim Palestinian government".
Asked about Hebrew press reports that Mr Sharon had last week urged Mr Bush and President Chirac of France to "force" Mr Arafat into a "ceremonial" position and appoint a one-year reformist Palestinian government "like in Afghanistan", the aide, Mr Danny Ayalon, said the Palestinian Authority "certainly has to be forced out and it doesn't look like they are going out voluntarily".
Meanwhile, the Israeli army said yesterday it had foiled two separate suicide bombings, planned for Jerusalem, in the course of raids in Ramallah. One of the attacks was being planned by Hamas and the second by Islamic Jihad, it said, adding that one of the Hamas men, Mohammed Ganam (22), was shot dead by troops as he tried to escape.
The army said also it had uncovered five tunnels being used to smuggle weapons and other material into Gaza from Egypt, and arrested 19 when placing the entire village of Taluza, outside Nablus, under curfew.