Siege lifts Arafat's ratings - for now

By JUSTIN HUGGLER

RAMALLAH - The streets were deserted, littered with stones and the burned remnants of tyres, twisted metal barriers dragged across to block the way.

This was where Palestinians defied the Israeli Army as they have not done for months, pouring on to the streets to protest as Israeli soldiers demolished Yasser Arafat's presidential compound around him.

Hundreds, some armed, defied a near-constant curfew, storming on to the streets in rage, facing certain bullets - and all for a leader who only weeks ago many were turning against.

Arafat cannot have dreamed of support like this.

Abd al-Rahman Awad, who was at the protest, said: "We were shouting blood sacrifice for the President."

Yet many were saying yesterday that if he gets this crisis wrong, Arafat could be finished.

It is unwise to write Arafat off - he has been wrongly written off many times before.

But many Palestinians now say that if he capitulates to Israeli demands, and hands over wanted men in his compound, he could be discredited among his own people.

Yet if he defies Ariel Sharon's Government, no one knows how far the Israeli Army will go.

Yesterday, the protesters marching across the Occupied Territories chanted that Arafat was the symbol of the Palestinian people.

We drove through the Manara, Ramallah's main square, where 27-year-old Issa Hraish died as he protested against Arafat's predicament.

He was shot dead by Israeli soldiers breaking up the protest, one of two protesters killed here.

And as the news spread, so did the protests, to Bethlehem, Gaza, Tubas, Salfit, Hebron.

Further down the road lay the reason: the Muqatta, Arafat's presidential compound, built by the British in the 1920s and reduced to heaps of rubble by the Israelis.

We got within a couple of hundred metres of it before Israeli soldiers forced us back, saying this was a "closed military zone".



Some buildings were reduced to piles of smashed concrete, others were half-ruined, with a wall torn away to show what had been the floor hanging off the building at a crazy angle.

In the midst of the devastation, in a building more or less intact - though its corners had been chopped at by a bulldozer - Arafat was trapped with about 200 aides and guards, and, the Israeli Government says, about 50 alleged militants.

The stairs in the building have been blocked off by bulldozers; the Palestinian leader cannot go up or down.

Yesterday the water and electricity were cut; there were reports the Israeli Army even shot a water tank on top of the building.

The word went around Ramallah that the Israeli soldiers had given Arafat an ultimatum: leave the building in 10 minutes or they would dynamite it.

Announcements went out from the loudspeakers of the city's mosques calling the people onto the streets. Churches - Ramallah has a large Christian population - rang their bells.

Hassan Ismail was one of those on the streets. We found him in his grocery shop, open despite the curfew.

"I opened this shop as a challenge to the Israelis," he said. "We challenged the Israelis this morning.

"We heard on al-Jazeera [Arabic television news channel] that the Israelis had given Arafat an ultimatum. About 300 of us went out. It was our intention to surround the Israelis who are surrounding Arafat's compound and put them under siege, but they stopped us in the square.

"They think that the Palestinian cause will be over if they kill Arafat or expel him.

"But that is not going to happen. The cause will go on. Our message to our President is: Stand fast."

It is hard to believe this is the same leader whom many Palestinians were bitterly grumbling about a few days ago, for the corruption of his ministers, for the perception that he does not share their suffering, above all for the way he capitulated last time he was put under siege.

Nobody has forgotten April, when Arafat was besieged in his compound - still standing then - by the Israeli Army. His popularity soared.

But Palestinians were bitterly disappointed when he made deals, surrendering wanted men to end his own confinement, and agreeing to the exile of others to end the Israeli siege of the Church of the Nativity. Many Palestinians felt betrayed.

"If he makes a deal it is a black spot," said Ismail.

You got the impression many here would rather Arafat was killed in his compound than made a deal with the Israeli Government again.

"They cannot deal with the Palestinians the way the Americans dealt with Afghanistan - just bringing in another guy and imposing him as leader" said Ismail.

"Personally I don't like Arafat," said Dr Jihad Mashal, the director-general of a Palestinian medical service.

"I think he did a lot of damage. But this is not the time for that. I think protesting against the destruction of the buildings was important for the Palestinians."



Israel may be banking on Arafat folding and making a deal.

An Israeli minister yesterday re-opened an offer Sharon made to Arafat in April - a "dignified" passage into exile, but on a "one-way ticket", never to return.

Yet if Arafat refuses to back down, it is not clear what the Israeli Government can do next.

Killing him would bring international condemnation.

Forcing him into exile has apparently already been rejected by the Israeli cabinet as too damaging to Israel - although Sharon is said to favour it.

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