October 19, 2001	Friday	Shaba'an 1, 1422

GAZA CITY, Oct 18: Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat personally asked Arab and European diplomats on Thursday to stop Israel’s assassination policy which he said targeted him as well, a senior Palestinian official said.

“I hope all countries will continue their efforts to stop (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon’s policy and planning of assassinations,” Arafat was quoted as saying, adding that this included him.

Earlier, Arafat’s senior adviser Nabil Abu Rudeina accused Israel of plotting to assassinate Arafat.

An aide to Sharon denied the charge, while in the West Bank, Israel thrust ahead with its deadly policy, killing leader of the armed wing of Arafat’s Fatah movement in a rocket attack.

Hunt for PFLP men: Hanan Gallouha had been crying since midnight when six Palestinian police officers banged on her door and dragged away her husband, a political leader whose organization had just claimed the assassination of an Israeli minister.

“I am very angry. The Palestinian Authority is our brother. When they arrested my husband I felt disgusted,” said the middle-aged woman, whose husband, Unis el-Jaro, belongs to the radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

Jaro was jailed along with two others Wednesday night on the orders of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who is trying to ward off a massive Israeli military reprisal for the PFLP’s killing of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi.

The treacherous situation has marred Arafat’s major diplomatic gains since the Sept 11 attacks on the United States, when Arafat aligned himself with the West’s campaign against terrorism and won US backing of a Palestinian state.

“Arafat has to balance actions now between what he thinks is right and what the Palestinian people think,” a UN diplomat told AFP on condition of anonymity.

“He can’t make mass arrests because it will cost him at home, especially with no progress on the peace front.”

But in Hanan Gallouha’s eyes, the Palestinian Authority has sacrificed her husband in its manoeuvres to persuade Israel and the United States that it is coming down hard on terrorism.

“My husband is a political leader. He does not know anything about the military wing of the PFLP,” she said, shaking her head vehemently at the idea her husband could be a killer.

As she spoke, she received a phone call from Jameel al-Majdalawi, head of the PFLP in the Gaza Strip, who is desperately trying to evade Arafat’s manhunt.

Majdalawi told Gallouha that her husband was fine and would be freed soon.

But by Thursday night, the Palestinian Authority had jailed eight PFLP leaders in the Gaza Strip and three in the West Bank, while Majdalawi remained in hiding.

Majdalawi denounced the arrests.

“This comes from Israeli pressure on the Palestinian Authority. I demand the release of the PFLP prisoners, to keep national unity,” he told AFP by telephone.

“They are supposed to release the people to keep unity. They understand this very well.”

Ghassan Khatib, an analyst who heads the Jerusalem Media and Communication Center, described the crackdown as “a damaging move for the (Palestinian) leadership.”

“It will be of a great damage because of who Zeevi was. If he was a normal Israeli polician, it would have been acceptable,” he said.

“But Zeevi represents Israel’s killing and ‘transfer’ policy for the Palestinians” to be expelled from the West Bank and Gaza Strip.