Global Policy Forum

By James Bennet

The Israeli government decided in principle tonight to "remove" Yasir Arafat, threatening the Palestinian leader with expulsion, jail or possibly death after almost three years of conflict that has defied solution, by force or negotiation. The decision, which Israeli officials said was unlikely to be put into action immediately, drew no direct criticism from the Bush administration, which simply repeated its opposition to any expulsion.

Acting after two suicide bombings killed 15 people on Tuesday, Israel, which declared Mr. Arafat "irrelevant" in December 2001, appeared to be seeking another means of pressuring him. "It's a Damocles sword over his head," a senior Israeli official said.

Yet for the moment, the decision, made by the security cabinet of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and couched in deliberately vague language, appeared to cast Mr. Arafat in a favorite role, as a besieged leader suffering with his people in defiance of superior force. After the decision, thousands of Palestinians rallied in Gaza City, with some shooting into the air, and thousands more converged on Mr. Arafat's compound, which has been blasted and bulldozed by Israel.

In ruins silvered by a full moon, they shouted slogans of support and cheered wildly when Mr. Arafat appeared beaming and flashing V-signs with both hands, bouncing them to the rhythm of the crowd's chant of "God is great." When his supporters chanted that they would sacrifice their blood and souls for Mr. Arafat, he repeated their words back, substituting "Palestine" for his name. "We tell the whole world that this people — the people of the giants — is not afraid, and will not bow," he said.

Rather than heightening tension here, the Israeli decision, at least for the moment, relieved it. Mr. Arafat's guards said they had been braced for an onslaught tonight, not an announcement. Earlier in the day, Israeli forces had seized positions on the tops of nearby buildings. "Don't worry," Nabil Aburdeineh, Mr. Arafat's top aide, said, flashing a grin. "Nothing will happen."

Yet, with Israeli forces poised for a possible invasion of the Gaza Strip, the atmosphere felt charged in the way it did in late March of last year, when Israel began its first major offensive into the West Bank after a series of suicide bombings. Then, too, Mr. Arafat was defiant. Some of his top aides begged him to act against militant groups to blunt the anticipated offensive, but he refused. A senior Palestinian official said Mr. Arafat did not believe Israel would move.

Mr. Arafat has also argued in internal debates that Mr. Sharon would not concede anything that would justify the internal conflict of battling the militants. Just over 20 years ago, Mr. Sharon, then the defense minister, led an invasion of Lebanon, driving the Palestine Liberation Organization back from Israel's northern border and eventually besieging Mr. Arafat in Beirut. Mr. Sharon has expressed regret that Israel did not kill Mr. Arafat then. It forced him into exile for years, though he reached Ramallah under the Oslo peace process while Israeli forces were still bogged down in Lebanon.

Today, Israeli warplanes roared over Mr. Arafat's compound, low enough that their weapons were clearly visible under their jagged wings, while Palestinian officials met in often stormy sessions with Mr. Arafat. They were dickering over how to fill a vacuum in Palestinian leadership and diplomacy. Ahmed Qurei, the new Palestinian prime minister, said on Wednesday that he would form a compact "emergency government" of six ministers and present it to parliament today. But other Palestinian politicians, including Mr. Arafat, blocked him.

Nabil Shaath, the Palestinian foreign minister, said Mr. Qurei wanted to create "a sense of urgency and seriousness." He added, "We missed that opportunity today." Dr. Shaath said there was an element of fatalism in the discussions. "What can we do to stop the Israelis?" he asked. Mahmoud Abbas, the previous prime minister, who was elevated at the insistence of the Bush administration and Israel, quit on Saturday, saying that Israel and Mr. Arafat had undermined him. Mr. Arafat had refused to yield control of all security forces to Mr. Abbas.

That battle was fought again today, as Nasser Yousef, Mr. Qurei's nominee to be interior minister, with nominal control of security, demanded that Mr. Arafat give up full control. He refused, in what Dr. Shaath called "a shouting match." Mr. Yousef rejected the Interior post and stormed out, clearly angry as he emerged into the courtyard.

Mr. Arafat pushed for a 13-member "security council" with himself at its head. Dr. Shaath said he hoped that council would begin taking "serious steps" on Friday to consolidate the forces, a demand of Israel and the Bush administration. "There still might be a little time — the next 24 hours," he said.

But diplomats involved in the latest peace initiative here, known as the road map, were dismayed by the outcome. Diplomats from the so-called quartet that drew up the peace plan — the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia — had pressed for the emergency cabinet, and as the proposal died some threw up their hands over preventing further violence. "Everyone's blaming Arafat on the Palestinian side, and our diplomacy is now over," one quartet diplomat said. "Put on your helmets."

The Israeli decision cleared away a procedural hurdle. Mr. Sharon and other top officials are now free to decide to act against Mr. Arafat, possibly after another devastating suicide attack, without seeking broader government approval. The step was also clearly meant to deliver a warning to Mr. Arafat and reassurance to the Israeli public that the government was responding to the recent suicide bombings, which occurred after Israel tried and failed to kill the founder of Hamas with an airstrike. One Western diplomat described the Israeli decision as "hortatory."

The announced decision was deliberately vague. The senior Israeli official said eventual action against Mr. Arafat might include expulsion or "neutralizing him, constraining his movements." Other Israeli officials have spoken of walling Mr. Arafat into his compound and cutting his communications — in essence, bringing a prison to him.

The Israeli news media reported that the options included killing him. The senior Israeli official declined to discuss that step, leaving the matter open. Other officials have said an operation to capture Mr. Arafat may wind up killing him. Mr. Sharon has previously resisted deporting Mr. Arafat because, he has said, doing so risked breaking a promise he made to President Bush not to harm the Palestinian leader.

The State Department balked at the Israeli decision. "We think that it would not be helpful to expel him because it would just give him another stage to play on," Richard A. Boucher, the spokesman, said. Yet, with its defense budget under great strain, Israel has few obvious military options remaining. Israeli forces are already pervasive in the West Bank, and Israel is already embarked on a campaign to kill the leaders of Hamas. But domestic Israeli pressure for action is strong.

Under the headline "Enough," the Jerusalem Post editorialized today: "We must kill as many of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders as possible, as quickly possible, while minimizing collateral damage, but not letting that damage stop us. And we must kill Yasir Arafat, because the world leaves us no alternative." In a statement, the Israeli security cabinet said: "The events of the last few days have again proven that Yasir Arafat is an absolute obstacle to the whole process of placation and peace-making between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Israel will act to remove that obstacle, in a manner, at a time and in a way that will be decided separately."

Hani al-Hassan, a senior Palestinian official, said as the crowd ebbed from the compound tonight, "The Israelis, they don't know what more to do." Referring to Mr. Sharon, he said, "He knows that the price for dismissing Arafat is very, very high, and I don't think they can pay it." Mr. Hassan said that more bloodshed on either side would achieve nothing, but that peace would only come when Israel agreed to withdraw from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which it occupied in the 1967 war.

Mr. Sharon says he will not negotiate under threat of violence. In its deliberations tonight, which lasted the three hours, the security cabinet also rejected a cease-fire proposed by Mr. Qurei. In its statement, it said that Israel would negotiate "only with a prime minister that will act immediately to dismantle and remove the terror organizations." It ordered military action "day and night without ceasing."

Yet even before the cheering crowd arrived at the compound, the mood was not somber. A group of Mr. Arafat's security guards, with semiautomatic rifles at hand, gathered around a reporter's computer to watch as the screen saver displayed pictures of the Maine coastline. As the stony beaches and pine trees flashed by, the men joked about which spot they hoped to be exiled to.

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