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June 14, 2002/Tamuz 4 5762, Vol. 54, No. 39
Will IDF expel Arafat?
LESLIE SUSSER
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
JERUSALEM - Since the intifada began, Israeli officials have declared Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat "irrelevant," a "terrorist," an "enemy," and a "pathological liar."
Now, after more than 20 months of relentless Palestinian terror, Prime Minster Ariel Sharon is said to have made up his mind to expel Arafat from the Palestinian territories.
Sources close to Sharon say the prime minister is just waiting for perhaps a "mega-terror" attack of the kind Israeli security officials warn the Palestinians are preparing.
"One more big suicide bombing and" Arafat "is out of here," an Israeli official close to Sharon declared in early June, after a massive bus bombing that killed 17 Israelis.
For months, Sharon has been encouraged by the Israel Defense Force chief of staff, Lt. General Shaul Mofaz. During Operation Protective Wall in April, Mofaz was caught on camera whispering to the prime minister, "We must throw him out."
Labor party leaders and some top intelligence officials are staunchly opposed.
The heads of the Mossad, military intelligence and the General Security Service all have warned the government of dangerous local, regional and international repercussions if Arafat is exiled.
Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, the Labor Party leader who was one of the first to suggest circumventing the Palestinian leader, maintains that expelling him would do more harm than good.
Sharon is convinced that as long as Arafat is around the violence will continue, reform of the Palestinian Authority will be a sham and there will be no chance for the long-term process of accommodation between Israel and the Palestinians that Sharon envisages.
Close aides concede that Sharon is particularly worried about Arafat abusing two essentially positive developments to rehabilitate himself internationally: the demand for reforms in the Palestinian Authority and the renewed peace process the United States is trying to launch.
Sharon fears that Arafat will pretend to carry out reforms, fool those members of the international community who want to be fooled and then enter an American-sponsored peace process as a seemingly legitimate partner.
According to his aides, it was partly to preempt this scenario that Sharon made the decision to expel Arafat.
President Bush, who declared after his White House meeting with Sharon on June 10 that real and deep reform must precede a peace process, may have allayed some of Sharon's concern on this score.
In addition, Bush was non-committal when asked directly whether he was for or against Arafat's expulsion.
Shortly after the president had spoken, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer repeated the official American position that reform and peacemaking should proceed in parallel. That could reopen the door for the kind of Palestinian duplicity, stage-managed by Arafat, that Sharon fears and seeks to prevent.
In what appears to be a calculated attempt to prepare public opinion, the Prime Minister's office has been leaking information since early June on Sharon's intentions regarding Arafat.
Unqualified support for the prime minister's position came in an editorial in the Ma'ariv newspaper, which argued that Israel has nothing to fear from expelling Arafat.
"We must not panic at the idea of expelling Arafat," it avers. "The sky won't fall on us, and it will teach the Palestinians, the world and ourselves that an arch-terrorist like him cannot be let off the hook."
Leslie Susser is the diplomatic correspondent for the Jerusalem Report.
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