GAZA CITY, June 3: A Palestinian court on Monday ordered the release of the head of a hardline group which claimed killing an Israeli minister, prompting Israeli fury and giving Yasser Arafat’s pledged reforms their first real test.

The release order for Ahmed Saadat, head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), clouded the arrival of CIA chief Tenet, who flew in to Tel Aviv on a mission to overhaul the Palestinian security services, accused by Israel of doing nothing to stop attacks on its citizens.

The Palestinian High Court in Gaza ruled that despite Israeli accusations, there was no evidence linking Saadat — jailed in Jericho under international supervision — to the October assassination of Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Zeevi by the PFLP.

“We call on the Palestinian Authority, if it respects Palestinian law, to implement this decision,” said Saadat’s lawyer Raji Surani.

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said the ruling placed Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in a “dilemma”, caught between the US-brokered deal with Israel for Saadat to be jailed and international pressure — including from Washington and Israel — for legal, political and security reforms.

“This is the highest court of the land and I believe its decisions must be respected,” he said. “On the one hand he has to comply with this decision. And on the other hand he knows the Israelis ... may abduct or assassinate” Sadaat if he is released.

Saadat was arrested by Palestinian security agents in January under Israeli pressure and then transferred last month to a Jericho jail with four PFLP militants found guilty by a Palestinian court of killing Zeevi.

The five men — and the makeshift court that condemned Saadat’s subordinates — had been trapped in the Ramallah headquarters of Arafat, under Israeli siege, for a month when their transfer was brokered by Western mediators, allowing the Palestinian leader to walk free.

Israel immediately slammed Monday’s ruling and said it would be going after Saadat.

“This decision is very serious. If it ends up that (the decision) is applied and he is freed, we will demand his extradition. He is an assassin,” said Raanan Gissin, a spokesman for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Defence Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer said Saadat’s release would free Israel of its commitments not to go after him.

Israel has accused Saadat of ordering the assassination of Zeevi, which the PFLP carried out in revenge for that of Saadat’s predecessor by the Israeli army two months earlier.

Palestinian security forces in the West Bank town of Jericho, where the men are under US and British supervision, said they had received no order yet for Saadat to be released.

The Damascus-based PFLP, meanwhile, welcomed the court order and called for “all those detained in Palestinian jails to be freed, including the four other members of the PFLP.”

The Palestinian Authority has previously ignored court orders for the release of a prisoner.

Jericho is in an isolated Palestinian autonomous zone near the Jordanian border, and is entirely surrounded by land under full Israeli control, closed to Palestinians. Israeli forces tightened their grip on the area after the ruling.

The problem will be one of many facing CIA chief Tenet, who arrived from Egypt to push for Palestinian security reforms to ease tensions and allow the Palestinian Authority to combat militant groups attacking Israel.

Tenet was to meet Sharon later Monday to hear his views on the reforms, and head to Ramallah on Tuesday to meet Arafat. But Arafat’s plans for political change, including a government shake-up and new elections, suffered a blow when the powerful Islamic group Hamas and its smaller rival Islamic Jihad both rejected an offer to participate in any new government.

The Israeli parliament also approved the return of the ultra-Orthodox party Shas to the government, two weeks after Sharon sacked the party’s ministers in a budget dispute.

As both the Palestinians and the Israelis were struggling to iron out domestic differences, US and EU diplomats continued to criss-cross the region in a bid to revive the moribund peace process.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who travelled to Syria and Jordan Monday while US State Department envoy William Burns also held talks in Amman, have been pushing for an international peace conference to be held this summer.

Meanwhile in Nablus, the population of at least 100,000 people spend a fourth day under Israeli re-occupation as the army carried out sweep for militants, rounding up hundreds of men for identity checks and questioning.—AFP