Posted on 09/20/2001 9:51:09 AM PDT by jonatron
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has failed to curb attacks against Israelis despite his truce declaration, a top Israeli spokesman charged Thursday, after a Jewish woman was killed in a spate of attacks.
"Right now I'm sorry to say he hasn't passed the bin Laden test," said Ranaan Gissin, spokesman to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, referring to the Saudi-born Osama bin Laden, suspect number one for the September 11 terror attacks on the United States.
"If there was a real opportunity (for a ceasefire), it is now after those horrendous attacks. Arafat is under great pressure to prove he is not what some claim him to be," Gissin told AFP.
He said the two-day-old truce announced by Arafat and the Israeli army was already unravelling under the weight of attacks, which he accused Arafat of allowing to take place.
"Is this a ceasefire or not? Arafat has made a pledge to take all the necessary measures to bring about a complete ceasefire, but these people came out of Palestinian territory and went back into Palestinian territory. It's the responsibility of Arafat to control it," he said.
"We see that the ceasefire is very tenuous, it's not holding. Clearly something is wrong."
He did not rule out a meeting eventually taking place between Arafat and Sharon's dovish foreign minister, Shimon Peres, but said Arafat has to silence Palestinian guns first.
He said the Palestinian leader, under pressure from the United States, made "a tactical rather than strategic decision to change course.
"In that tactical decision he thought he could get away with some level of violence which would enable him to show he has managed to drag Israel to negotiate under fire. And that of course will never happen," Gissin stressed.
And he warned Israel would not put up with the attacks for much longer.
"We are not going to tolerate for long a situation where we sit idly by and they keep shooting at us. If we see that this continues we will take the necessary action in our self defence," a clear threat to attack Palestinian militants.
"We hope we don't need to do that, we hope the Palestinian Authority will understand in this brave new world after September 11 you can't live in the grey areas.
"You either fall on the side of the bin Ladens or you fall on the side that is opposed to them," he insisted.
And right-wing Infrastructure Minister Avigdor Lieberman went even further, hinting that Israel should target Arafat himself.
"Arafat is Israel's bin Laden. We see how the United States deals with Bin Laden. It doesn't send envoys; it doesn't speak with them ... It sends airplanes not envoys. We demand that the prime minister do the same," he said on public radio.
Sharon compared Arafat to Bin Laden last week in talks with US Secretary State Colin Powell, a comparison he had drawn before the anti-American attacks.
An Israeli settler was killed Thursday and her husband seriously injured in Palestinian gunfire on their car in the West Bank.
A Palestinian man was later shot dead by Israeli forces after an attack on a Jewish settlement that injured five Israeli troops.
Gissin also hinted that Washington's attempts to piece together a global coalition against terrorism would fail if it accepted Arafat's offer of participation before he has fully renounced violence.
"The US cannot establish a workable coalition if some members of that coalition are still clandestinely involved in terrorist activity," he said.
He also said Israel would not join any such coalition if it included countries or groups it considered to linked to terrorism.
"I don't think this government or any government in Israel would consent to roll over, play dead and say 'Okay, now you can kill, because for the sake of the coalition we will sacrifice the lives of our citizens,'" he said.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell on Tuesday ruled Israel out of a military riposte to bin Laden, which would deter Arab states from joining the coalition the United States is trying to build.
"I don't see nations such as Israel playing a role in that kind of operation," he [Powell] said.
LOL!
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"Arafat has prevented attacks in the past few hours and we have appreciated his intervention in this prevention," Peres said without giving any details of the attacks which were averted.
"Palestinians have been making serious efforts, but Yasser Arafat has his own problems with Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah, which cannot be sorted out at the press of a button," he added. ( AFP )
A few hours?!? They must have been cleaning their guns and reloading.
I have read many inane posts on Freerepublic. This is a verbal free for all. Some posts are just more inane than others. With some folks it is worth trying to debate. With others it's like negotiating peace with Arafat or Bin Laden. The Rabbis have an expression: Sinah m'kalkeles es ha shurah. Hatred drives on to absurdity. Mister Avgas, believe what you like.
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