GAZA CITY, Aug 27: Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat called on Wednesday on hardliners to renew their commitment to a ceasefire which was shattered by last week’s Al Quds bus bomb as Israel vowed to continue assassinating the militants.
Arafat’s intervention, which followed an appeal by US Secretary of State Colin Powell, came as his moderate prime minister Mahmud Abbas convened an emergency cabinet session to discuss the security crisis.
“President Yasser Arafat calls on all groups and parties to commit themselves ... to the ceasefire to give a chance to all peaceful international efforts for the implementation of the roadmap,” a statement on the official Palestinian news agency Wafa said.
In Washington the White House brushed aside Yasser Arafat’s call, saying such organizations must be dimantled.
“Arafat has once again shown himself to be part of the problem. He is not part of the solution,” spokeswoman Claire Buchan said here as US President George W. Bush spent time at his nearby ranch.
In his statement Arafat accused Israel of rejecting the US-backed roadmap for peace by “escalating” its attacks against hardline groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
But he called on the factions to make a new commitment to the ceasefire to “stop the war, the killing, the assassinations and daily military escalation”.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad both called off a seven-week-old truce last week after Israel killed Hamas co-founder Ismail Abu Shanab in retaliation for the suicide bombing of a Al Quds bus that left 21 people dead.
Powell, whose government has refused to negotiate with Arafat, called on the veteran leader last week to work with Abbas to end the upsurge in violence.
A senior Israeli government official said on Wednesday that Israel would continue the targeted killing of militants despite a botched air strike on Tuesday evening which left an elderly passer-by dead.
“Our liquidation operations are going to continue against everyone implicated in terrorist attacks, in the preparation of attacks or in the firing of rockets,” he said.
“We will continue to act when and where we judge useful, with all means necessary, until the Palestinian Authority decides to fight the terrorists as it is committed to doing.”
An elderly Palestinian was killed Tuesday evening and more than 20 others wounded in a failed helicopter strike in the northern Gaza Strip.
Hamas said the targets had been Wael Akilan and Khaled Massoud, two members of the group’s armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades.
The army said the raid had targeted Massoud, who it said had fired Qassam rockets into Israel.
Military sources said that an Israeli soldier on Wednesday shot dead a young Palestinian who had run at him with a knife at a checkpoint near Bethlehem.
Abbas met with his cabinet here to discuss the deteriorating security situation, laying the blame at the door of the Israelis.
Information minister Nabil Amr told reporters that the cabinet held “Israel fully responsible for this deterioration, and all the grave implications it has on regional stability.”
Amr also said that Abbas would seek a vote of confidence from the Palestinian parliament on his first 100 days in office in the coming week.
Abbas is hoping that such a vote will give him a mandate to take on Arafat, as he battles with the veteran leader for control of the security apparatus.
But in a sign of the opposition that he is facing, around 200 members of youth groups linked to Arafat’s Fatah movement demanded the resignation of the cabinet as they marched through Ramallah on Wednesday.
Some denounced Abbas’ security chief Mohammed Dahlan, who has pledged to take on the militants, as an American agent.
There has been little sign so far of action from the Palestinian Authority against the hardline groups after it pledged to confiscate the weapons of the hardliners.
Its demolition of a number of tunnels in Gaza used to smuggle arms from Egypt was dismissed as little more than a publicity stunt.—AFP
