Palestinian President Yasser Arafat may flee to Baghdad with his close aides if violence in the territories escalates as expected, claims Jane’s Foreign Report.
The report bases the speculation on that the PA has not paid its staff for two months and that the Palestinian opposition figures are gaining influence among the general population.
Yet, the report does not say whether Arafat, on the other hand, is losing popularity among his people.
Leaders of Arafat’s movement, Fateh, have repeatedly said that the Intifada has brought about an unprecedented national unity among the Palestinians, and ruled out any rift among members of the PLO mainstream group, which steers the uprising in coalition with Islamic and nationalist opposition factions.
The report says that there is an unbridgeable gap between what Israeli Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon is likely to offer and Arafat's expectations, guaranteeing that there will be more violence possibly on an unprecedented scale in the coming weeks.
“Arafat is preparing for it. He is also prepared for the day when Sharon orders the Israeli air force to stop an airliner with the Palestinian leader aboard from landing at Gaza airport. This would be a painless way for him to go into another exile,” says the JFR.
The Jane’s Foreign Report claims that the visit made by the president’s senior advisers to Baghdad last month was reportedly meant to make arrangements for a potential evacuation, in addition to its declared aim: to discuss general Iraqi support for the Palestinians.
One of the emissaries was Farouk Kaddoumi, who is dealt with in the Arab World as the Palestinian foreign minister. Kaddoumi has opposed the Oslo agreement between Israel and the Palestinians from the start, and refused to move to the Palestinian lands from Tunis, where the PLO’s Political Department is still located.
“Our prediction,” concludes the report, is that “it will take time before Arafat takes a decision. But if the violence increases, the decision may come sooner rather than later.”
On Thursday, meanwhile, two Palestinians and an Israeli were injured when sporadic violence flared in the West Bank that kicked off with a bomb and continued into the night with a gunfight, Israeli and Palestinian sources told AFP.
The agency said that a Palestinian husband and wife were injured when Israeli forces shot at the village of Qusra in the northern West Bank after an Israeli bus came under fire in the area, residents and hospital officials were quoted as saying.
One of the victims, Muntasser Mahmoud Awad, 20, was taken by the Israeli army, while his wife Jawaher was hospitalized in Nablus suffering bullet wounds to her hand, they said.
The Israeli army said that a bus and troops had come under fire near the Jewish settlement of Migdalim near Qusra southeast of Nablus, but that there were no injuries. It did not say whether soldiers had returned fire.
In the southern Gaza Strip, a powerful bomb exploded the flashpoint city of Hebron, while in Jerusalem Palestinians shot and wounded an Israeli driver, said AFP, citing the Israeli police and army.
As darkness fell, a gunfight erupted between an Israeli army base and the Palestinian town of Beit Sahur near Bethlehem, witnesses said.
Witnesses said Palestinian gunmen and soldiers exchanged gunfire and that Israel also responded by firing five explosive shells, setting fire to a Palestinian house. There were no immediate reports of serious injuries.
Israel accused Fateh of setting the bomb near Hebron, which reportedly exploded near an area where some 400 zealous Jewish settlers live in heavily guarded enclaves, the army radio said.
A Palestinian police official in Hebron said he was not aware of such an explosion when contacted by the agency.
Earlier Thursday, Roni Netanel, 33, of the Jewish settlement of Maale Adumim that lies north of Jerusalem, told police he was shot at from a car containing four people that blocked him at an intersection.
Haaretz said that the settler was shot by Palestinian gunmen from a passing car in east Jerusalem,.
The settler was waiting at traffic lights when a burst was fired from a passing car, said the paper, adding that the assailants sped off in the direction of the West Bank city of Ramallah.
This is the third attack in the same area in the past three months.
Jerusalem police chief, Mickey Levy, said the attackers could have come from any of the Arab villages in the vicinity or from the Palestinian city of Ramallah, just north of Jerusalem.
"It was not the first Palestinian shooting attack at the same road junction," he said. "We have arrested a number of shooting cells in that area. Apparently this is a new one," he told the paper.
Responding to the attack, Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert was quoted as telling Israel Radio that "[Palestinian President] Yasser Arafat's main goal is to ignite Jerusalem and the area surrounding Jerusalem so as to bring about international intervention or pressure." – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
