GAZA CITY, Jan 18: Hundreds of people demonstrated across the Palestinian territories on Friday in protest at the Palestinian Authority’s arrest of radical leader Ahmed Saadat.

In the Nusseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip some 800 people gathered to protest Yasser Arafat’s arrest of the head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, detained on Tuesday by Palestinian intelligence agents.

Israel had told Arafat he could not leave Ramallah, where it has marooned him since Dec 3, until he arrested Saadat and the two PFLP men who killed Israeli minister Rehavam Zeevi in October in revenge for Israel’s slaying of Saadat’s predecessor.

In Bethlehem in the West Bank, some 400 people marched through the town from the Church of the Nativity, chanting slogans against Palestinian leader Arafat and his West Bank chief of intelligence, Tawfiq al-Tirawi.

Slogans directed at the intelligence chief included “You are working for Israel,” and “Look out, this is a red line.”

The PFLP’s armed wing issued a threat against Tirawi and Ramallah police chief Mohammed Saleh on Thursday, warning them to stop the arrests and demanding they release Saadat.

And in Ramallah, a crowd of hundreds of PFLP supporters marched toward Arafat’s headquarters, where Israeli tanks took up positions overnight in response to a Palestinian gunman’s shooting spree at a family party in Hadera that left six dead.

The crowd was dispersed by Israeli troops firing tear gas.

Around 400, including many women with children, later returned to Arafat’s headquarters compound, but on the other side from where the Israelis were, chanting for Saadat’s release and shouting “Shame on you for these arrests when we’re under occupation.”—AFP