Defying Israeli and U.S. demands that he crack down on Islamic militants, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat kissed and applauded leaders of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements Wednesday and warned that Palestinians were prepared to resume their violent revolt against Israel.
At a conference of Palestinian factions, Arafat returned to the combative language of the seven-year uprising against Israeli occupation, which ended in 1994 with an agreement for self rule.
“There was an uprising for seven years,” Arafat said at the conference, which he called to protest the policies of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “Seven years. We can erase and do it all over again from the beginning. There is nothing far from us. All options are open to us.”
As Arafat delivered his address, Israel lashed out on another front Wednesday, launching its heaviest air strikes in southern Lebanon in 16 months.
An Israeli military statement said the raids, which cut power to thousands of civilians and dropped bombs near a Lebanese artillery battery, were meant to warn Lebanese officials to do more to rein in the Shiite Muslim militants who lobbed dozens of Katyusha rockets into northern Israel Tuesday.
Wednesday’s attack prompted angry new protests from Lebanese officials, including Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who likened it to “state terrorism.”
On Tuesday, the Israeli government said it would not retaliate immediately after the rocket attacks. But after waiting overnight, Netanyahu and his aides decided it was time to send Lebanon a message.
At Wednesday’s Palestinian conference, Arafat also appeared to be making a point.
His remarks came just days after American mediator Dennis Ross prodded him to renew security cooperation with the Israelis and take action against Hamas and other hard-line Islamic groups that have carried out terrorist bombings in Israel. Arafat met Tuesday with the head of Shin Bet, the Israeli domestic security agency, as he began to comply with that request.
But at Wednesday’s session in Gaza, called “The National Unity Conference to Confront the Challenges,” Arafat was courting the militant Islamic groups who favor a more confrontational stance toward the Israelis. The groups said they saw the meeting as a means of resisting the crackdown by the Palestinian Authority that Israel and the United States are demanding.
In Washington, senior American officials were dismayed by Arafat’s remarks.
“It simply makes an already difficult situation more difficult,” one official said. “We have a crisis of confidence, so no party should do or say things that undermine confidence about a peaceful resolution of their differences.”
Wednesday’s conference was significant because it marked the first time that Islamic Jihad, a militant group that operates primarily in the Gaza Strip, had joined a meeting of Palestinian factions under Arafat’s leadership.
Unlike Hamas, which has both social programs and a military wing, Islamic Jihad has devoted itself almost exclusively to attacks on Israel.
At Wednesday’s conference, representatives of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, who are political leaders of their organizations and not members of the organizations’ clandestine military wings, exchanged customary kisses with Arafat after their speeches.
They said later that their participation in Arafat’s conference did not mean they were renouncing violence, as the Palestinian leader did in reaching an accord with the Israelis.
The delegates said they remain implacably opposed to the agreement reached in Oslo in 1993 between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Israeli officials criticized Arafat for inviting Hamas and Islamic Jihad, asserting that his invitation of groups responsible for bombings that killed scores of Israelis contradicted his commitment to fight terrorism.
Arafat is “giving the terrorist organizations a stamp of approval,” said David Bar-Illan, communications director for Netanyahu.
Arafat and his aides might think that “appeasing, pacifying and placating these organizations will do the trick,” Bar-Illan added, “but they already tried that, and we found that all this dialogue does is give these organizations the respectability and legitimacy which makes it easier for them to continue their terrorist activity with impunity.”
