Arafat: they want me dead

GAZA CITY - Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat personally asked Arab and European diplomats yesterday to stop Israel's assassination policy which he said targeted him as well, a senior Palestinian said.

"I hope all countries will continue their efforts to stop [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon's policy and planning of assassinations," Arafat said, adding that this included him.

Earlier, Arafat's senior adviser Nabil Abu Rudeina accused Israel of plotting to assassinate Arafat.

An aide to Sharon denied the charge.

The US State Department urged Israel to act with restraint in response to the murder of Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi in Jerusalem.

Otherwise, Israel would be letting terrorists derail recent steps toward peace with the Palestinians, deputy spokesman Philip Reeker said.

"That's exactly what the perpetrators of these acts want to see happen," he said.

The State Department also declined to support Israel's insistence that it had the right to try the terrorists.

That is something for Israel and the Palestinian Authority to work out, Reeker said.

Israel issued an ultimatum to Arafat to hand over Zeevi's killers or face harsh retribution, backing its ultimatum by seizing parts of three Palestinian-ruled cities.

A 10-year-old girl was among three Palestinians killed in fighting that ensued.

Hours later, a car explosion near the West Bank town of Bethlehem killed three more Palestinians including Atef Abayat, a militant on Israel's most-wanted list.

The circumstances of the blast were unclear and the Army did not comment, but Israel has recently renewed its policy of striking Palestinians accused of plotting attacks.

"We've called for restraint," Reeker said.

Israel should not "let the terrorism that was perpetrated against their minister to have a victory in this by derailing the positive steps that we've seen".

He apparently referred to a decrease in year-long violence and Israeli withdrawals on the West Bank.

The Bush Administration is planning to launch a new US drive for a negotiated settlement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

President George W. Bush has already endorsed statehood for the Palestinians and the State Department has taken to publicly calling on Israel to give up land for promises of peace.

About 40 per cent of the West Bank and most of Gaza are already under the control of Arafat or under shared control with Israel.

Arafat demands all of the land and half of Jerusalem for a capital.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine claimed responsibility for Zeevi's murder, calling it revenge for Israel's killing of one of its leaders on August 27.

Bush and the State Department condemned what they called a despicable act of terrorism and insisted Arafat and the Palestine Authority arrest and prosecute the murderers.

The PFLP, which the State Department says has its headquarters in Syria and operates on the West Bank, was listed on October 5 by the department as a foreign terrorist organisation.

Its spokesman, Ali Jeradat, was detained and questioned on Thursday, released and re-arrested yesterday.

Reeker said: "The important thing to stress again is that chairman Arafat and the Palestinian Authority need to act now to halt decisively the activities of all those responsible for the particular act and for other acts of terror."

The latest violence unfolded as Israelis observed a day of mourning for the ultra-nationalist Zeevi.

"Avenge the way Gandhi would avenge you," Zeevi's son Yiftah, using his father's nickname, urged Sharon at a politically and emotionally charged funeral.

Wednesday's killing was the first assassination of an elected Israeli official by Palestinians since the founding of the Jewish state in 1948.

Drawing a parallel with the US-led air strikes on Afghanistan, Israel vowed to treat Arafat's Palestinian Authority as a "leadership that supports terror" if he did not hand over Zeevi's assassins.

Palestinian police acting on Arafat's orders arrested five members of the militant PFLP after it claimed responsibility for gunning down Zeevi at a Jerusalem hotel.

But Palestinian officials, who had previously refused to turn over militants wanted by Israel, showed no signs of bowing to the latest Israeli demands of handing over the suspects as Zeevi was buried with full military honours in a nationally televised funeral. Thousands of mourners, some weeping, filed past his grave.

He was a 75-year-old former general who advocated the "transfer" of Arabs from Palestinian territories occupied during the 1967 Middle East war, lands that many religious Jews consider theirs by biblical birthright.

Sharon told a memorial service Zeevi was both an adversary and a friend and said he was parting with him "with great pain".

Zeevi was laid to rest at the Mt Herzl military cemetery where Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister killed in 1995 by a right-wing Jew opposed to his peace policies, is buried.

In the first retaliation for Zeevi's killing, Israel sent tanks and troops into parts of Ramallah, Nablus and Jenin.

Palestinian cabinet minister Yasser Abed Rabbo condemned the incursions as a "new reoccupation" and likened Sharon to Osama bin Laden, Washington's chief suspect in the September 11 attacks.

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