This Week
Shakespearean Debate
this scenario that Sharon made the decision to expel
Arafat.
President Bush, who declared after his White
House meeting with Sharon on Monday that real
and deep reform must precede a peace process, may
have allayed - some of Sharon's concern on this score.
In addition, Bush was non-committal when asked
directly whether he was for or against Arafat's expul-
sion, and Sharon might have taken his silence as
tacit acquiescence.
However, shortly after the president had spoken,
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer repeated the
official American position that reform and peace-
making should proceed in parallel. That could
reopen the door for the kind of Palestinian duplicity,
stage-managed by Arafat, that Sharon fears and seeks
to prevent.
In what appears to be a calculated attempt to pre-
pare public opinion, the Prime Minister's Office has
been leaking information since early June on
Sharon's intentions regarding Arafat.
Unqualified support for the prime minister's posi-
tion came in an editorial in the Ma'ariv newspaper,
which argued that Israel has nothing to fear from
expelling Arafat.
"We have long been warned that his absence
would create a dangerous anarchy in the territories,
with Israel the prime loser. But what's happening
there now, under his leadership?" the paper asked.
"We must not panic at the idea of expelling
Arafat," it said. "The sky won't fall on us, and it will
teach the Palestinians, the world and ourselves that
an arch-terrorist like him cannot be let off the hook."
The IDF's June 7 strike at Arafat's Muqata'a head-
quarters, in which a shell penetrated the Palestinian
leader's bathroom, was meant to show Arafat how
vulnerable he is and to prepare world opinion for
the next step.
As one Western diplomat put it, by going further
each time, Sharon is "making the unthinkable banal."
To exile or not to exile? With Arafat, that seems to be Israers question.
LESLIE SUSSER
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Jerusalem
S
ince the intifada began, Israeli
officials have declared Palestinian
Authority leader Yasser Arafat
"irrelevant," a "terrorist," an
"enemy," and a "pathological liar."
Now, after more than 20 months of relentless
Palestinian terror, Israeli Prime Minster Ariel Sharon
is said to have made up his mind to expel Arafat
.
from the Palestinian territories.
Sources close to Sharon say the
prime minister is just waiting for an
opportune moment, perhaps a
"mega-terror" attack of the kind
Israeli security officials warn the
Palestinians are preparing.
"One more big suicide bombing
and" Arafat "is out of here," an
Israeli official close to Sharon
declared in early June, after a massive
bus bombing that killed 17 Israelis.
For months, Sharon has been
encouraged by the Israel Defense
Forces chief of staff, Lt. General
Shaul Mofaz. During Operation
Protective Wall in April, Mofaz was
caught on camera whispering to the prime minister,
"We must throw him out."
Labor party leaders and some top intelligence offi-
cials are staunchly opposed.
The heads of the Mossad, military intelligence and
the General Security Service all have warned the
government of dangerous local, regional and inter-
national repercussions if Arafat is exiled.
Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, the Labor
Party leader who was one of the first to suggest cir-
ANA LYSIS
Leslie Susser is the diplomatic correspondent for the
Jerusalem Report.
1
cumventing the Palestinian leader, maintains that
expelling him would do more harm than good.
Transport Minister Ephraim Sneh, a close associ-
ate of Ben-Eliezer's and one of the more hawkish
Labor leaders, also says exiling Arafat
"would solve nothing."
Sharon, however, is said to be convinced
that as long as Arafat is around the vio-
lence will continue, reform of the Palestinian
Authority will be a sham and there will be no chance
for the long-term process of accommodation between
Israel and the Palestinians that Sharon envisages.
Palestinian leader
Yasser Arafat shows
the damage to his
headquarters to
Japan's Foreign
Minister Yoriko
Kawaguchi after
their meeting in
Ramallah on June
8.
Arafat Subversion
Close aides concede that Sharon is particularly wor-
ried about Arafat's abusing two essentially positive
developments to rehabilitate himself internationally:
the demand for reforms in the Palestinian Authority
and the renewed peace process the United States is
trying to launch.
Sharon fears that Arafat will pretend to carry out
reforms, fool those members of the international
community who want to be fooled and then enter
an American-sponsored peace process as a seemingly
legitimate partner.
According to his aides, it was partly to preempt
ALL NEW 2002
C70 CONVERTIBLE
The Great Debate
Backing Sharon's expulsion plan, General Mofaz
argues that Arafat is the driving force behind
Palestinian terror. If Arafat were removed from the
scene, the chief of staff says, the level of violence
probably would drop.
Likud Party legislators such as Yuval Steinitz con-
tend that Arafat's international standing limits
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