MIDDLE EAST: Capitulating to heavy US pressure, the Israeli government yesterday withdrew its demand for the extradition of six men who are with Mr Yasser Arafat in Ramallah, and paved the way for the end of its month-long siege of the Palestinian Authority President.
However, Israel is still blocking the arrival of a UN fact-finding team, appointed last week to investigate last month's fighting at Jenin refugee camp.
After a weekend of lengthy telephone conversations with President Bush and other senior administration officials, Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, pushed through a cabinet vote in favour of a US proposal under which the six men - the alleged financier of an intercepted Iranian arms shipment, and five men involved in the murder last October of the Israeli Tourism Minister, Mr Rehavam Ze'evi - would be held by British and US jailers at a facility in Palestinian-controlled territory.
Mr Mohammad Rashid, a senior adviser to Mr Arafat, said last night that "we are inclined to accept" the proposal, which would then see Mr Arafat being allowed to leave his battered Ramallah headquarters and to travel in and around the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and overseas.
For Mr Sharon, acceptance of the US proposal represents a devastating volte-face.
By confining Mr Arafat to a single building for a month, he had been hoping to isolate and ultimately marginalise the Palestinian leader.
But Israel was unable to resist international pressure from visiting envoys, including the US Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, to repeatedly breach that isolation.
Still, as of last week, Mr Sharon was insisting that Mr Arafat would not be freed unless the six were extradited.
Indeed, last Thursday, when Mr Arafat arranged a military tribunal at which four of those involved in Mr Ze'evi's killing were ordered jailed for 12 months to 18 years, the prime minister sneered that the tribunal was a waste of time, since a second trial would be held in Israel.
Yesterday he told his ministers, "I know they'll say I've zig-zagged but when the president makes a request, and pledges to stand by us we have no choice."
Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, the former Israeli prime minister who is often Mr Sharon's harshest critic, said last night that he had made a cardinal error.
On Saturday, gunmen disguised in Israeli army uniforms infiltrated a settlement and shot dead four Israelis.
Two of the victims - Danielle Shefi (5) and Katia Grynberg (45) - were gunned down in their beds at Adara, a hilltop settlement outside Hebron.
"These people are just animals," said Danielle's father, Mr Ya'akov Shefi, whose two other young children were also wounded.
"Anyone capable of looking a four-year-boy and a five-year-girl in the face and then shooting them is not human."
Mr Sharon's reference to a pledge by President Bush "to stand by us" appeared to relate to the Jenin investigation.
A three-member UN team remains in Geneva awaiting Israeli permission to travel to the camp.
The US initiated the resolution that led to the team's establishment and Mr Sharon evidently felt he badly needed to avoid alienating the Americans.
"This awful United Nations committee is out to get us and is likely to smear Israel," said Israel's communications Minister, Mr Reuven Rivlin.
Meanwhile, Israeli security officials said that they had thwarted a planned car-bombing of a Tel Aviv skyscraper.
British and American civilian monitors will begin leaving today for the Occupied Territories as part of a US-brokered deal to lift the siege of Arafat's headquarters by Israeli forces.